Hey, it's Memorial Day weekend, and my sister got home from work at 6:15am, so it was time to head to the cabin. I am not a mornings guy,
Last Sunday, I was anxious to go on my hike, but the canyon I was heading to is so inaccessible, it takes nearly an hour to get there, despite it not being that far away in miles. I spent most of the day in the car, and for some that reason I forget now, I decided to turn the radio to the Country stations (oh, I remember, I finally gave up on the audiobook I was listening to, since I just couldn't get into it, and I didn't like the narrator).
When I moved to Los Angeles, I was horrified to discover just how terrible the radio stations there were, in the music capital of the world. It was all such garbage that I started listening to the talk radio station, the Oldies one, and after a while, I gave Country a try. What I found was a less calculated, more heartfelt kind of music, and it really spoke to me. It was--except for Garth Brooks and Shania Twain--all new to me, and there were tons of memorable songs I still love today from that stretch of time.
Of course, I eventually discovered that there was a crassness to Country too, once I started hearing bullshit references to God, beer, the flag/America, and trucks in every song, thrown in there as insincerely as any singer saying, "It's great to be back in Des Moines--home of the best fans in the world!" at a concert (in Des Moines, of course). Once I heard those themes, often really cheaply inserted, I couldn't unhear them. And I moved on to different stations, never to return.
But that day, I drove around, sick to death of the channels I usually listen to (and on Sundays, literally a third of them become religious stations . . . it's the law. And that limits your options, son), and went to Country. And I discovered a couple of really cool songs, no different from a Rock song except for the twang of the singer or a steel guitar (I think the ones I liked could be considered "Bro Country," but I'm not much of a music snob). I have heard two Country songs in the past year that made the crossover onto the Pop stations. One of them--the Dan & Shay one--I adore enough to try to learn it for a storage unit visit. The other--the one they're playing constantly on all stations, surely the Christian Rock ones included--I will never listen to again.
I'd missed the cabin. I was the last one to be here in the late fall (I made two visits after we had shut down the water, using the ground as my toilet ("THE WORLD IS MY TOILET!"), and I remember like it was the day before yesterday how much I had enjoyed coming here and forcing myself to write, read, and lay around from August to November.
There's still snow on the western side of this cabin and the one next to it, and once my nephews went fishing, I sat down beside the snow and recorded myself reading that short story (my phone could only record about half or less of it, and I didn't even think to bring my Faux Pro camera, but I'm fine with only having video bookends on a video . . . again).
I also opened my story-in-progress "Podcatcher" tonight, the finishing of which is one of my goals for 2020. I worked on the Lara and the Witch sequel (not much), did some rewriting of an old story (one I don't even have a date on, maybe 2010 or so?)--which will be impossible to count the words on, since the original was in a notebook.
I discovered two things with my exercise today. The first was that the wooden floors of the cabin are quite unpleasant to do sit-ups on (I finally grabbed a sleeping bag and did the sit-ups on top of it, but still struggled). The other was, when I threw on my shoes and started my nightly run (doing so just as the sun had disappeared over the horizon, worried that it would be too dark at actual night to run and I'd end up breaking an ankle or something) . . . I just couldn't do it. At home, I have this ritual where I just go with the first song that plays on my phone, and cannot stop (even to tie my shoe) until that song is over (this, you may recall, came back to bite me when I chose American Pie as the first song on one occasion).
But we're up in the mountains, and I'm jogging on dirt (and mud), and I was gasping, heaving, and praying to Shiva, "Let me die," by the halfway point of the first song. I was practically crawling by the song's end, and had to stop--not just slow down--and try to get air, before selecting the second song.
Unless I gained three hundred pounds since running last night, I'm chalking it up to the elevation. While I was red-faced and unable to adequately fill my lungs, I saw an entire . . . flock of deer that were startled by my presence, and watched them do that amusing hop-run they have as they (quite literally) headed for the hills. Despite not making it even a mile, I got back to the cabin feeling like I had accomplished something, because it had been so difficult.
Sit-ups Today: 60
Sit-ups Total: 1185
I guess deer move in herds, not flocks. But they still jump around like a Chinese ghost.
After my run, my sister and her kids wanted to watch a movie. They'd brought their Xbox 360 and a projector, and we all watched THE BLACK CAULDRON together on the floor of the bedroom. I had never seen it before, but remember when it came out in 1985, and the one or two kids in school that saw it talking about Gurgi and how cute he was.
Well, I disagree, thirty-five years later. I won't go so far as to say that BLACK CAULDRON sucked, but it was decidedly not good. I remember hearing that story about Jeffrey Katzenberg getting put in charge of Disney and watching the work-in-progress and demanding all sorts of changes, and the animators telling him, "You can't make edits to animation, dumbass." I'm sure those guys enjoyed their unemployment insurance until Richard Rich started making endless SWAN PRINCESS movies.
I never read the book BLACK CAULDRON was based on, but I wonder if it was a good one. I found a first edition at a thrift store last year sometime, but never put it up for sale. Not that I want to read the book myself, but I am curious. Filmmaking fascinates me, especially the way different visions for projects affect the final product, the way things change and evolve and compromises make things better or worse.
After the movie, I mostly did audio editing tonight instead of writing. I'm fine with that. I don't feel like I wasted my time (Pseudopod gave me another story to narrate, and I got that one done rather quickly). Abigail Hilton also sent me a story to record, but I haven't read it yet. I think of myself in 2013, believing I would be an audiobook narrator, and just how dedicated I was to that . . . at first. I no longer consider myself to be an aspiring audiobook narrator, despite having done one for Angela Townsend just last year. And my royalty checks agree.
But ah well. You can't be everything in life. Or, in my case, anything.
Words Today: 820
Words In May: 23,504
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