Homeward Bound! But Where's Shadow?

I'm posting a day early because today is the day I'm actually going home for Thanksgiving Break; I thought it would be more appropriate, considering the title and content of this post.  This post is mainly my unfiltered thoughts from when I wrote it at 1:30 in the morning so if they seem a little abrasive, that's probably why.

If you're reading this on the day of its posting, good for you; but for me there are only four and a half days left of NaNoWriMo!  If you're not reading this on the day it was posted, I assume you had a hideous eye-infection that prevented you from doing so.  Just as it doesn't really matter when you're actually reading this, the last four and a half days of NaNoWriMo don't really matter because I've already achieved my goal of writing more words than I did last year.  Scratch that.  IT MATTERS!  I've come way too far not to finish now.  Once November's over I'll finally be able to unleash the natural editor inside me that I've kept chained and padlocked in a dark and lonely cell with walls three feet thick and only one key -- "The End."

NaNoWriMo has been a bit of a wild ride for me.  There was a week at the very beginning where I liked my secondary characters more than my main character but since then I've suffered from a severe case of the neglected subplot.  I'm okay with this, though, because I can always go back and flesh out my subplots during edits but I have to resolve my main conflict one way or the other by the end of the month.  Next week I'll probably do a brief debrief before continuing on with the story of my summer.

Right now, however, I'd like to write about something that's been bothering me this past week.  Over the past few months I've felt the best I've felt about myself in a long time.  I can wake up in the morning, look in the mirror (after I've showered, of course) and say to myself, "What a good looking, smart young man you are!"  I've managed to do well in all of my classes -- even the one with a difficult professor.  Heck!  I'm writing a freaking novel!  How cool is that?  In addition to all that, I have a great group of friends that I have dinner with more often than not, even though I live halfway across campus.  The best analogy I could come up with for how I feel/felt is Sassy the cat from "Homeward Bound."  If you haven't seen "Homeward Bound" you must not have had a childhood.  Anywho, Sassy nearly drowned after plummeting down a waterfall -- my grandfathers' deaths -- but was nursed back to health and is now back stronger and sassier than ever.  (Believe me; I have my sassy days.)  I'm homeward bound -- in the home stretch -- both for NaNoWriMo and this quarter.  Soon I'll be home enjoying the comforts of family and real food.  But something's missing.  Where's Shadow the golden retriever?

This past week I've felt as if something is missing from my life.  I noticed that I've been listening to songs that have a powerful cathartic effect on me -- "Into the West" from "The Return of the King" soundtrack and "Fire with Fire" by the Scissor Sisters, to name a couple.  I even dug out the slideshow I made for my high school graduation.  It could be that I'm just anxious to get home and see my family but if my subconscious is honest with me, I don't think that's it.

A few nights ago I had a dream with a meaning as clear as lake water.  A certain well-known YouTube violinist/dancer came to my school to perform.  After her performance she decided to hang around the dorms for a few days to get to know people.  For some reason, she took particular interest in me.  We became friends and would sit around eating apples as we chatted.  Things never progressed beyond that.  Even though she's quite a bit older than me I still find her to be a very attractive young woman so I was confused as to why my subconscious wouldn't capitalize on such a fortuitous situation.  As a boy I woke up disappointed; as a friend, happy; as an individual, restless.

I may just be shoving words into the porcupine's mouth, but I definitely feel like that dream means something.  Even if it has no meaning, it made me analyze my friendships and think about what it is I want from them.  I feel like an ass typing this, but most -- if not all -- of the friendships I've formed since coming to college are supplementary to my studies, meaning, I use my friends and the adventures we have as a method to blow off steam built up in the pressure chamber that is my Computer Science class.  That isn't to say I don't genuinely care about my friends because I do; it's just that if it comes down to a choice between spending an entire Saturday working on things I want to get done or going to Vancouver with my friends, I'll choose to lock myself in my room with a bag of potato chips until I've finished whatever it is that I wanted to get done.  I'll dispense with the hypothetical pretenses and just say that this is exactly what happened last Saturday (11/23).   But apparently, working nonstop on Japanese homework, Computer Science homework, a study abroad application, and 2,117 words for NaNoWriMo from 11:30am to midnight wasn't enough, because I stayed up until 1:30am writing this blog post.

As much as I ended up getting done, it wasn't without much deliberation that I declined the invitation to Vancouver.  The reason, I think, goes back to that dream I had a few nights ago; what do I want out of my friendships?  Could it be possible that I'd like something more than just eating apples and chatting?  It's possible but my conscious mind tells me that's not it.  I think what had a larger impact is this: "I have trust issues."

I keep my own true feelings well guarded not because I'm afraid somebody might hurt me but because I fear that my feelings will hurt someone else.  It makes absolutely no sense, I know, but because of this I find it very hard to trust anyone but my family and a few of my closest friends from high school.  Yes, I will tell someone -- you, the reader of this blog, for instance -- personal details about myself but it is very likely I'm only doing so because it's something I've already incorporated into who I am as a person and don't think should really matter to anyone else.  Sometimes it does.  It's not anything I wouldn't tell any of my friends, it's just a matter of who wants to know about it.  You're still reading this blog so I would hope that you give a ripe banana about what I'm writing.  If not, eh, that's your choice.

Another of my trust issues -- and perhaps one of the more irrationally understandable ones -- is that if someone gives me any reason whatsoever not to trust them, I will tend not to, especially in situations where serious injury is possible, such as being a passenger in a car.  If I know the driver has a history of less-than-intelligent decisions, I will automatically feel uncomfortable no matter how safe of a driver they actually are.  I don't quite know how I developed these trust issues but they're there.  Maybe it has something to do with the Minnesota Vikings.

So what am I missing?  I have no idea.  Maybe it's my family.  Maybe it's friends that I don't spend enough time with.  Maybe it's a trustworthy companion like Shadow I can share more than just smalltalk with.  Maybe it's that character in my story I just killed.  Maybe it's something completely different.  All I know is that if I'm going to sit around waiting for some famous, attractive girl to walk up to me and hand me an apple it's going to be a long wait.  The sad thing is, though, that might be what I'm waiting for.

Current NaNoWriMo Word Count: 43,047

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I started working on a new sonnet but because I'm posting earlier than usual it didn't get finished in time.  Perhaps I'll post it later this week.

If you're in the United States, I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!  Enjoy the food and the company of your family and be thankful for all the things in your life that make you who you are -- both the good and the bad, the triumphs and the failures, the known and the as of yet unknown.  Happy Thanksgiving!  Until next time.  -NLD

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Liked this post?  Didn't like it?
Leave some feedback and let me know why!  I'm always seeking to improve.
Thanks for reading!

Unpublished material, ©2013 Neal Digre

A Lahar of Tea and Fruit Snacks

The blog post that has been twice postponed is finally flowing into your eyes, carried from my keyboard to your screen by a lahar of tea and fruit snacks.  My summer was far too busy for me to write about the entire thing in one post so I'll just cover my summer classes and save the rest for a later post.

I returned from my grandmother's house -- bustling with friends and family stopping by with cards, condolences, and hot dish -- to an empty house but for the one remaining cat of the two that had made the long, hot journey out to Washington and the last and oldest of the three original cats I grew up with.  It was hard those first few days being back: to still find Frisky's hair on everything; to not hear her at 6:00 in the morning, saying, "feed me."  But Midnight -- my brother's cat -- was there to fill the six o'clock silence.

After learning to close my door at night, I woke up around 7:00 most every day.  I would feed the cat before I poured myself a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats; most mornings I barely had time to pour the milk before Midnight had inhaled her canned food.  After showering, I would do a few chores around the house: watering the flowers, picking lettuce for my lunch or sweeping the kitchen floor.  At 8:41 I would load up my backpack and head out the door to drive the 28.4 miles to school for my 10:00 class.  Why leave over an hour early to get someplace that takes 40 minutes,max to get to? because I'm the type of person that expects to be delayed by traffic driving through one of the least densely populated areas west of the Cascades and east of Puget Sound; I'm the type of person that thinks it'll take twenty minutes to walk from the parking lot to my classroom; I'm the type of person that has to be 20 minutes early anyway.  Somehow I managed to make it to class on time.  When my classes were done for the day I'd drive the 28.4 miles back home, do my homework, fry myself an egg or make half a box of Kraft Mac 'N' Cheese, proceed to eat it all in one sitting and then sit in a fake-cheese induced stupor watching television or YouTube until I went to bed around 11:00.

I found that having an entire house to myself suited me.  Apart from the freedom it imparted, it was good to know that I'm capable of taking care of myself for an extended period of time.  For the first time in my life, I had to go to the grocery store and get my own groceries -- not just the snacky stuff I keep in my dorm room for when I'm too lazy to go to the dining hall -- actual groceries.  By no means did I go crazy with the pots and pans but I experimented with a few cornerstones of cooking.  For instance, I'd never cooked my own eggs -- let alone Eggs in a Basket -- but by the time my mother returned home I could fry or scramble eggs with the best of the mediocrities.  It's a great feeling knowing you can go without your mother or a dining hall for a month and not DIE.  In addition to providing myself with the basic necessities of life, my time alone provided an opportunity to gauge how well I manage my own time.  There wasn't anyone to remind me to do my homework or take out the trash; I must be okay at the whole time management thing, though, because the pile of Snickers wrappers never got over four inches high and I didn't fail any of my classes.

By far my favorite class from summer quarter was "Tolkien's Imaginary Languages."  In addition to learning to read, write, and speak Elvish, the morphology of Dwarvish, and a few Black Speech words, I learned (almost) the entire history of Middle Earth.  Not only was it a language, linguistics, and history class but also an art and literature appreciation class.  This fusion of everything I'm interested in made it the best class I've ever taken, made better by the brilliant professor that taught it.  Of course, I already knew how brilliant he is because he was my professor for "Intro to Russian Civilization" -- the prerequisite class I took in the Spring.  In our stuides of Tolkien and his universe we covered everything from the origin of orcs to the unknown origin of hobbits; from Gandalf's real name to Saruman's Orcish one; from Beowulf to the Kalevala; from Tolkien's illustrations to his personal life; from the Creation of Middle Earth to the current Age of Man.  It was on the Creation of Middle Earth that I did my final project.  Middle Earth and the wider world of Arda were brought into existence through song; I decided to compose that song using Tolkien's "Ainulindalë" from The Silmarillion as a guide.  I would never use GarageBand again largely because of it's uncooperativeness when it comes to details like 16th note triplets, instrumentation, or sound levels but it was nice (to begin with) for someone like me that had never composed a piece of music before because I could just mess around and listen for what sounded good.  I will probably never compose another piece of music -- that's probably a good thing -- but it was a fun experience and I got an "A" for it so BAM!

My professor for the Tolkien course also taught the Morphology class I took.  While I think much of that class went in one ear and out the other, the material must have hung around long enough for me to do well on the tests.  Irregardless (that's a Morphology joke, by the way), it was a fascinating class and I am very glad to have taken it.

The other Linguistics class I took -- Sociolinguistics -- was far less interesting.  Sociolinguistics is an intriguing subject but the professor failed to improve his performance from when I had him for "Intro to Linguistics" during spring quarter.  He's the nicest little old man you'll ever meet but he is incapable of teaching a class.  He's one of those professors where you think the class might be better if he didn't rely so heavily on videos but you're not sure so you're glad he does because you don't want to listen to any more of his mind-numbingly boring lectures.  The best part about that class was his eclectic wardrobe; I never knew if he would show up to class wearing the tweed suit and clip-on bow tie he wears during the regular school year or a tie-die t-shirt, ripped khakis, one of those jackets with the leather strips hanging from the sleeves, and an old bandana to top it all off.  Some days it felt like I'd missed the memo about "hippy day."

As a "for fun" class I also took "Beginning Windsurfing."  I may revisit windsurfing in a later post but I don't want to spend too much time on it right now because this post has gone on long enough; I'll just say this: holy crap was it a workout.

Current NaNoWriMo word count: 32,010 words

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I know this is a poetry blog but I'm changing things up a bit; instead of a sonnet, I've posted the final project I did for my Tolkien class.  After all, music is but a more pure form of poetry.  Keep in mind that I used GarageBand (aka the crappiest software for composition ever), that this was my first attempt at composing ANYTHING, and that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.  You have been warned.

I must also mention that some parts may sound familiar.  I borrowed bits from the movie soundtracks partly because I was running out of time but mostly because I wanted a recognizable song associated with a certain character or scene to represent the creation of a particular race of beings (elves, men, hobbits, etc.).

Before you follow the link to my project please PLEASE read at least the first section (up to page three, paragraph 2 in the link I've provided) of Tolkien's Ainulindalë; if you do, my composition should make a little more sense and not seem as bad as it is.

READ THIS BEFORE FOLLOWING THE LINK BELOW!! --->   Tolkien's Ainulindalë Text

Sound Cloud: Tolkien Final Project -- Ainulindalë

I hope you enjoyed this week's post.  I'll be back next week with -- I hope -- the rest of my summer and maybe even a brand new sonnet.  Until then, have a great week!  -NLD

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Liked this post?  Didn't like it?
Leave some feedback and let me know why!  I'm always seeking to improve.
Thanks for reading!

Unpublished material, ©2013 Neal Digre

A Sudden Storm of NaNoWriMo

I would have liked to get caught up to at least the beginning of the current quarter but when I think about how busy my summer was, that's not going to happen.  As busy as it was, my summer didn't involve powerful emotions like those associated with the loss of a cat or grandparent.  Without those emotions to fuel the wood stove of creativity I find it more difficult to write about my own life.  In addition, NaNoWriMo has been sucking a lot of my time, energy, and words.  I still want to do justice to a recapitulation of my summer, though, so I'm going to postpone that tale until next week...  or whenever I get around to writing it.  Instead I'll just give an update on NaNoWriMo, post a sonnet and call it good for the week.

Here I am, in the middle of the second full week of 1667 words per day and I'm barely hanging on to the bullet train that is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).  This is my second year doing NaNoWriMo and my second year deciding on a story at 11:30 pm on October 31st.  It was a bit of a slow start but now that my plot has clicked in my mind things are moving along.  But I don't want them to.  Coming up with plot has never been a problem for me; where I struggle is in description and character development.  But trying to work on what I suck at can be problematic when NaNoWriMo's only purpose is to get words on the page -- a lot of them.  Whether they're total crap or not makes a rat's fart of difference but I as sure as taxes better make my word count for the day or things of a terrifying and inexplicable nature will happen.  So when it comes to deciding between sitting here for an hour struggling with a paragraph of description or blazing ahead and leaving the essence my story far behind, I choose the latter.  I have to remind myself that NaNoWriMo isn't just about writing a lot of words, it's fighting through a paragraph of description here and there; it's closing all seventeen of those YouTube tabs and opening up a blank document; it's, for one month, devoting yourself entirely to something most people would have to be crazy to do (oh wait...  never mind) while at the same time not forgetting to eat, do homework, go to your job, talk to family, acknowledge friends, etc.; it's getting better at the process of writing -- if not writing 50,000 words then maybe 35,000 or 3,000.  As long as new words are being created and a story is being told, I've succeeded.

Current Word Count: 20,394 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Apart from spending time with family and friends, one of the things I miss most about Minnesota is a good ol' Midwest thunderstorm.  Living in the Seattle area ensures plenty of rain but very little thunder and lightning to accompany it.  Even though my first trip (of two) back to Minnesota this past summer was only for a few days, the storm gods answered my prayers.

The wall of wind hits first, shaking the trees to within an inch of their life.  Some can't handle it and soon many small branches and a few larger ones litter the ground.  Inside the house, looking at the chaos through a pane of glass, it's nearly silent; only the muffled rustle of one hundred thousand leaves brushing against one another as they whip back and forth and a faint whistle coming through the crack under the back door can be heard.  Then there's an intense flash of light immediately followed by a sonorous boom and the soft tinkle of dishes in the cupboard.  When I step outside the wind whips at my t-shirt, trying to whisk me away along with thousands of leaves that were too weak to hold on.  I stand firm, exhilarated by the darkening sky pierced by bent batons of light conducting the cacophonous roars of one hundred angry giants.  The wind soon dies down but is succeeded by a deluge of rain.  I stand under the overhang watching the rain fall in heavy sheets. Before heading back inside I step out from beneath the overhang long enough to get my hair just wet enough so that droplets of water can caress their way down the side of my face and the back of my neck.  Once inside, I sit at the kitchen table sipping a hot cup of tea and listening to the placid pitter-patter of heavy raindrops overhead and the rumble of distant thunder.



Summer Thunderstorm

Divine one blissful thunderclap so few
Allow to crash upon in silent waves:
Omnipotent applause. As here with you
I lie not even clouds obstruct my gaze.
Auroral lightning flash afore our minds
Moreover blinds excessive sense absolved
By ribbons of torrential rain and winds
Around us gust the only ones involved.
Immersed in tides far more than falling tears,
Now drowned beneath euphoric hearts entwined
Beyond tornados twirling fate in peaceful years;
Eternal dark dispelled by flames mankind.
Within this flood forever snug and warm
I watch this passing Summer Thunderstorm.



I can't promise anything but I'll do my best to get, at the very least, a recapitulation of my summer classes written for next week's post.  Until then, I'm logging off.  There's a story to be written.  Have a great rest of your week!  - NLD

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Liked this post?  Didn't like it?
Leave some feedback and let me know why!  I'm always seeking to improve.
Thanks for reading!

Unpublished material, ©2013 Neal Digre

The Truth: A Change of Plans

Okay, time to try this for the third time.  I started out writing this post about how I thought that in my two previous posts I favored one grandfather over the other.  I intended to use that as a springboard to write about truth but less than two paragraphs in, I couldn't think of anything else to write.  I realized that I couldn't think of anything else to write because the truth was illuminated in a light shade of blue and a single keystroke; I deleted most of what I'd already written and started afresh with a new angle and an anecdote to prove my point.  I got three and a half paragraphs in before Blogger decided it hates me.  I mean seriously, how does hitting the undo button delete everything I'd written in a previously saved draft of the blog?  Thank God I'm not doing something stupid like going to school for Computer Science in order to get a job intimately working with computers for the rest of my life.  Oh, wait... that's exactly what I'm doing.  So here I am writing this post for the third time after four episodes of Archer, a thousand more words in my NaNo Novel, a peanut butter sandwich and a few shots of tequila (just kidding, Mom).

And if you're worried I've forgotten, I'll conclude the epic saga, "The Past One and a Half Years of My Average Life," next week but I just had to change my plans a little bit to work this out with myself.  Once I'm done with my introspective/philosophical blogna and if you didn't stop reading after that terrible pun, there's a sonnet waiting for you.  Okay, now I'll get to what I actually want to write.

While it is true that as a child I was always more excited to see my paternal grandparents because they lived so much further away and, hence, I didn't get to see them as often, that doesn't mean I cared about one grandfather more than another.  But it was on this uncertainty, in addition to the fact that I didn't have the same reaction when my maternal grandfather died as when my paternal grandfather died and a few sentences that didn't make it into the final drafts of my previous posts, that I tried to base my argument.  Even though I edited out those sentences for a reason, they lingered in my mind and festered.  I asked myself, "Could it really be true that I cared about one grandfather more than the other."  So with this post I set out to seek the truth.  Like I said, my failed attempts at writing about it was enough evidence for me but I'll break the rest of it down for you.

My primary internal conflict came from the fact that I didn't (and still haven't) really cried for my maternal grandfather.  But there are many variables -- variables that have nothing to do with the amount of love I had for each grandfather -- that go into my tear ducts.  When my paternal grandfather passed away I was also dealing with the struggles of my first quarter of college: making new friends, papers, exams, projects, upcoming finals.  In comparison, I wasn't in school at the time of my maternal grandfather's death so the absence of that stressor made things much more emotionally manageable.  But because the only other major loss in my life was accompanied by a total mental breakdown I thought that because I didn't experience one when my maternal grandfather passed away meant I somehow cared about him less.  I now realize that the mourning process doesn't work like that.  It's different for each person; for each loss.  Another variable is that I was unable to attend my maternal grandfather's funeral but was able to be there for my paternal grandfather's.  Being surrounded by hundreds of other people mourning the loss of the same person makes the tears flow a little easier, I think.  Not only that, but my dad and the rest of his family have always been very emotionally strong people.  They were there to be strong for me, allowing me to lean on them and cry if I needed to.  When my mom's father passed away, she was stretched emotionally thin as it was having just celebrated her eldest son graduating from college and moving out into the real world; I had to be one of the ones she could lean on.  Similarly, when I went to spend a few days with my grandmother before going back to school for summer classes, I felt that I needed to be strong for her.

There may come a time when I subconsciously decide I no longer need to be strong and will allow myself to cry -- to mourn -- for my grandfather, but that aspect of the mourning process just hasn't come for me yet.

Both of my grandfathers were very, very special people.  Certainly, they each had their own areas of grandparenting at which they excelled and personalities that made them very different people but I loved them both the same and couldn't imagine what my life would be today if I hadn't had the privilege of knowing them both for the extraordinary men they were.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was also going to write something philosophical on the subject of truth but I decided these last few posts have been long enough already.  In place of eight extra inches through which you'd have to scroll, I wrote a sonnet:



Traveling East

The sun traverses cobalt skies but in
Its rightful place is standing still, while ants
Below the earth are swept away by wind;
Among them spiders try to hide but can't,
By ninth commandments they abide; a bright-
Eyed youth perceives it all through outcurved lense;
The contradicting paths of those upon
An anthill layered deep with sands of sense,
That coalesce to form one paragon --
Unknown except to those of passage earned;
Now traveling west to where we'll never come;
It seems so far away yet if he turned
Around, it's little more than twelve steps swum.
Though multitudes of things the bright-eyed youth
May never know, he only writes the truth.



If you only want to read this blog for the poetry (I'll completely understand if you do), from now on just skip down to the second section.  I sincerely hope, though, that you'll start/continue to read the journal section of my blog.

That's all for now, so have a great rest of your week and if you're doing NaNoWriMo, don't give up!
- NLD

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Today would have been my Grandpa Benson's 87th birthday.
Happy Birthday, Grandpa.  You are profoundly missed more than I can express.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Liked my writing or blogging skills?  Didn't like them?
Leave some feedback and let me know why!  I'm always seeking to improve.
Thanks for reading!

Unpublished material, ©2013 Neal Digre