Big Day

Today, Oct. 26, I finished the rough draft of a novel I've been working on intermittently since the summer of '09. The word count comes out to somewhere between 65,000 and 68,000, depending on the software.

This is exciting for me because it's the culmination of a lot of hard work. It's also the second story I've ever actually seen through to completion. The first, which I was also excited about and proud of, was a rough draft of a short story that I wrote over a week in August while taking a break from the novel.

I won't say what it's about. To anyone. Even the mistress.

I'll tell you this though. There is still a lot of work to be done. What's going to happen now is I'm going to spell check it, format it nice and double space it, print it out, put it in a binder, and put that binder on a shelf for another day.

After some time passes, I'll come back to it, read through it, and take lots of notes about things I like, things I hate, and things to change.

Then I'll prop that bidner up on my desk and I'll re-write the whole story.

Then I'll print that out, set it on a shelf. Sometime later, I'll re-read that version, make notes, then prop that binder up and make those changes.

Then, maybe, if I'm lucky and I work very hard, I'll have something worth showing someone.

Until then though, I'll just be proud of doing something that just a couple years ago I would have assumed I'd never do.

Oh, also, I might have forgot to mention:
I didn't get into any schools so the mistress and I quit our jobs and moved in with her dad out in the country where someday she might get some land that we hope to build a house on, deep in the woods, where we can keep bees and raise chickens and goats and garden and just kinda be ourselves but in the meantime we're both broke and working part-time jobs and generally questioning the wisdom of moving in with a man who eats one meal a day that consists of a can of ravioli and half a bag of croutons.

You Suck, March

I had a moment this morning to reflect on the past few weeks. I haven't been feeling well lately, and I recalled that about a year ago I found myself cursing the month of March and the challenges it brought. I also recalled that I had quite a miserable March, 2007. Is it the time of year? Coincidence? Perhaps month names that are also verbs are destined to suck.

This month started off great as I rode the high of my MFA acceptance through a fantastic and carefree weekend with some friends. The day we got back, however, we had to tend to a sick Starbuck. Some non human entity had been leaving strange pukes around the house, so we isolated the chief culprit, Starbuck. We didn't catch her puking, but in two days she didn't do any eating or drinking either, so we took her to the vet.

It wasn't good. She'd lost half her weight, and had a condition that necessitated immediate care. Over the next few days we agonized on how much money to spend in search of what was wrong and then how much to fix it. There were many teary nights and harried vet trips. When all was said and done, we were able to care for her at home: she required feedings every 4 hours through a tube run through her neck, as well as several medications doled out through the day.







(Click here for more information on what was wrong with Starbuck)

For the next two weeks the Mistress and I traded off waking up at 4am to feed Starbuck. Feedings take about a half hour, all told, and by the time I would get back to bed I was too awake to fall asleep quickly. Our sleep debts quickly began to compound until the two of us looked like the walking dead. I'd stopped caring to trim my beard and mustache, and the stupid mistakes I was making at work began to garner attention.

Thankfully our efforts and attention paid off and Starbuck began to eat on her own. We could cut back her feedings in order to encourage her to eat more on her own, allowing us to catch up on precious sleep.

The increase in sleep allowed me to regain my mental prowess, which upon its return, began to focus solely on my wait to hear from the remainder of MFA programs I applied to. The two schools that accepted me, the nice one in Seattle and the nice one in Boston, have not offered me much in the way of funding. Nothing from the school in Seattle, and the one in Boston offered a Graduate Assistantship position which, generous though it is, would barely cover my living expenses. For either school I would be looking at student loans in the neighborhood of $45,000 dollars. This is more than the $20,000 debt limit I'd set in my mind, so I'd been counting on one of the other four schools I hadn't heard back from to give me a good offer.

In the mean time, on the small chance that I did choose to go to the school in Boston, I thought The Mistress and I might as well go to the open house to see what's what. That, and I've never been around Boston. This past weekend we dropped Starbuck off with mom and headed north. Raucous P. L. B. Filibuster and The Big E share an apartment in a neighborhood of Boston and were nice enough to let us crash at their place for the night.

Of course, we had a fantastic time in Boston, and I liked the school a great deal. It's made the decision much harder, and every day that goes by I wait nervously for word from one of the remaining schools. It's hard for me not to assume at this point, however, that I'm not getting any other offers. The decision I'm left with in that case is presently tearing me up.

I'm only considering the nice school in Boston, as it's given me a better offer financially than the nice school in Seattle. So what if I decide to go? For one, I get to spend the next three years focusing on my writing. The school offers classes in many genres and types of writing, and I think I might also like to take a class on writing for magazines. Oh, and there was one about writing for columns that I'd like to take. In addition, they have a very tough teaching course that is required if you want a Teaching Assistantship. Less than half those that take the course are actually awarded a position, and it's decided by an interview system. This sounds intimidating, but I respect it. I think it's more fair to the undergraduates being taught and to the new teachers than other schools who throw TAs into a freshman comp course with little preparation. Of course, I don't know if I'd like to teach, but it is the one field that I would be more qualified to work in post MFA than I am now. The pragmatic side of me is very excited about that.

Specifics aside, attending would mean three years of challenges that would push me to grow as a writer and as a person. I would have fun with some good friends, and enjoy living in a culturally rich city. When all is said and done, I might have a chance at chasing down some teaching opportunities, and maybe I'd open up some other writing opportunities that I hadn't planned on. I'd also, however, struggle to make ends meet while at the same time trying to give my writing it's due attention. That is, after all, the reason for going in the first place. Also, best case scenario, I find some teaching jobs that pay just about what I'm making now (not a lot) in a place I'd like to work. That, however, assumes a lot. Funding for liberal arts programs is waning and I presume will continue to do so so long as this economic crisis is in effect. Other than that, I wouldn't be qualified for anything more than I am now, (not much), so I'd have to find a job doing what I could, probably still making about what I do now or less. My increased loan payments would make it difficult to make ends meet, maybe impossible, and could prevent me from saving money or taking out a loan for a car or a house.

So what if I don't go? Well, first, I'd have to stave off the waves of depression as I think about all the fun and excitement I'd be missing. And then the waves of depression that will come as I realize I've got to either find a new job (doing what?) or suck it up and keep working at the job I have now, which feels like a prison sentence. I mentioned previously that it wouldn't be so bad to move away and start over, find a new job, a new place to live, but such a thing is much easier said than done. Especially nowadays. I dread that the truth may not be so, but I can only hope that somewhere, out there, there is a job that won't make me question whether I should wake up in the morning, and I am desperate to know what that job might be and how I can find it. Getting an MFA lets me explore one possible avenue while allowing me to enjoy life and learning for a few years before I again face that dilemma. However, it might make for a harder life down the road, and with the economy where it is, does that seem very prudent? But would it be worth it for the happiness and the personal growth?

This is the impasse at which I find myself, and I... we... are very much awaiting relief. All advice is welcome.

April, save us.

Oh, No Time for Prayer, Bob.

Just got an email from the director of School C. Said to call when I get the chance. I called, and there was good news, bad news, and advice.

The good news: he said my sample's been getting high marks and strong votes in the committee, and he wouldn't be surprised if I hear back from half the schools I applied to. I can't express how proud this makes me feel.

The bad news: many programs just don't have money this year, due to the flailing economy. Many schools are in tight spots as their endowments have shrunk drastically depending on how they were handled. On one side of the spectrum the school I work for invested very conservatively and saw its endowment take a hit that, compared to the average, is not too bad. Better still, we don't handle much of our operational budget from the endowment, so we're not feeling the pressure yet. Other schools survive by their endowment and have already seen huge chunks of it disappear. So it depends on the school.

The advice: don't go into debt for an MFA degree. If I get an offer with money, grab it and hold on. If I get an offer but there's no money, ask if I can defer for a year and hope things will look up by then. (They won't I'm pretty sure.)

Even so, I'm still reeling from the good news!

Audacity

Sometime over the break we visited Bennington and Funk. It was a great time, and I'm sad we don't get to see the two more. During the visit I had to use their restroom a couple of times, each time for more than just a minute or two. This gave me the opportunity to read their shiterature, among which was a 101 rules of writing style book. You know the kind: each page or so has another rule, each rule's a bit of wisdom or motivation to convince you, the reader, that you CAN write the Great American Novel burgeoning inside you.

I was skeptical. Not that these types of books don't offer help, it's just that the help they offer is usually used to placate rather than motivate, and really, I've heard it all before. This book, however, offered alternative takes on classic tips, sometimes refuting them. One of the tips I remember was about not writing at Starbucks. The folks who write at Starbucks want to be seen writing at Starbucks. Write somewhere where you can focus your energy into the page, not into looking cool.

He was a bit glib, but many of the things he had to say rang true to me and I hadn't heard them before. The piece of advice that stuck with me the most was this: don't talk about what you're working on. With anyone. When you get a new writing idea, it can be all encompassing. It can be the only thing you think about all week. It will fill your every idle thought. You can't wait to get started on it, except you've just got to figure one or two things out before jumping in.

So what do you do? You tell your friends. How, in this torrent of excitement, could you not? I know this, because I do this with every project I get worked up about. When someone asks "what's new?", it's the first thing that pops to mind. What the writer pointed out, and what I've found to be the truth, is that every time you talk about that idea, you're deflating it, letting the excitement go. That excitement, that pressing need, that's what's going to sustain you through the hard work of doing. Talking it out neuters the project, taking the urgency away, and allowing it to be postponed indefinitely.

It's in this spirit that I hadn't written here about my desire to write a novel. I mean, it's nothing new: I've entertained the idea of writing prose at novel length for years. This time, however, was different. I'd been sleeping, and I dreamed up a couple of fantastic characters, and when I woke up, I needed to (I do me need) write at least a couple scenes with them. I'd caught the flame of inspiration, and I didn't want to loose it this time, especially knowing now how precious it can be.

Problem is, I didn't feel ready to tackle something like this. I've tried writing stories before, and I found that I write characters and dialogue well, I set scenes up well, I can establish and draw out tension, but what I can't do is figure out what should happen next. Where should the story go? What should this tension resolve to? I don't handle the big picture well.

So I went to the library and took out as many books as I managed to find that might deal with plot or development, and I started reading them. Slowly, thanks to Fallout 3.

This book I'm reading, written in the 70's and from a very different point of view than modern "tap the inner artist inside us all" self helpers, starts with a list of qualities essential to have as a writer. Round about quality nine, they got to "Regularity and Capacity for Work: Pursuit of Excellence", which touched on the subject of finding, then taking, the time to write. This is what most books today start with, or touch on most heavily. I wasn't expecting to find anything new here.

Then I read the following:

Some publishers have been known to suggest that an author short of money "get a job" to finish a book. Some would-be writers go into the teaching profession, or editing, or journalism, thinking in this way to keep in touch with the subject in which they are most vitally interested. It won't work. Better to chop down trees, cook dinners, drive a taxi, or go hunting or fishing - anything with no carryover is safest, once you know where your true interest lies.

And it shook me. Not the kind of thing you want to feel right before bed. I know why I wanted to go to school: to study the craft of writing. I think it would greatly enrich my life. I feel the great need, however, to justify my actions in terms of potential utility, especially after majoring in Philosophy, then struggling to find work afterwords. There is plenty or ridicule out there for people studying the humanities, there always has been. It's impossible not to feel that pressure to lead a life that others call productive.

I think that's why, from the beginning, I imagined myself going into teaching, or editing, or managing a journal; something I could make a living from related to my interests. It's in this way that I imagined myself having the most potential for happiness and satisfaction while still being able to pay the rent. Access to these opportunities is the easiest to justify going to school. What I take away from that quote though is that, if writing is what I want to do, then I should seek to focus solely on that pursuit, and do whatever else I can necessary to survive. To get a job related to writing only provides a sense of security, that at least you're close enough to the world, that should you fail to write, that it's still some part of your life.

The alternative, however, runs counter to the common sense of our culture: to underachieve, do what you have to to get by when you're capable of more, so that your best can go to your writing. The question then falls to me: do I think I'm good enough to justify that kind of life? To what extent is it possible and practical in these times, and to what extent should that matter? Would I have the audacity to do so in the first place?

I'm Mike D and I'm Back From the Dead

It's been so long since I've written a substantive post here that if we've only been keeping in touch via this blog, there's no way to really catch up. The list of people this applies to is woefully long: friends, relatives, there are many folks whom I've been negligent in keeping in touch. Of course, those folks also know that this is nothing new, that I've a pattern of falling off the map with tide-like regularity.

Also, I have a half-hour, well 25 minutes now actually, before the Dark Mistress comes home and we go out to eat. We're celebrating the passing of my winter break. In the next, uh, 23 minutes, I hope to sum up what I've been up to lately.

As my previous post alluded to, I sent in all the needed materials for my MFA applications on December 8th, the deadline I'd set for myself. Ahh! I just spilled corn husker's lotion all over myself! 21 minutes!

On the beginning of my last day of work December 18th actually, I decided to pop into the English building, having seen my Professor's car in the lot. He happened to be in, and I learned that he and his wife suffered a horrible personal loss, which is why he was so hard to get a hold of this semester.

Over the course of the nest few weeks I'd get various notices from schools that they hadn't received the letters of recommendation from my professors. As of last week, I've sent 5 or 6 emails out to them (the professors), and I'm done. They're adults, they're professionals, and if emailing them doesn't work, what else can I do? It's break, so it's not like I can track them down in their offices.

After work ended, I hung up my hat for some serious and long needed decompression. It actually began with a bit of depression. Applying to MFA programs had been my sole purpose since the summer. It was incredibly stressful, but it also shut up that little voice in the back of my head that always says things like "what you're doing isn't important", "how is this bettering yourself in any way?", "you're going to end up a boring nobody that no-one cares about unless you get off the couch". (Those voices, by the way, are counter-productive)

Shit! 11 Minutes.
Well, anyway, I got through the slump by working on a craft project and ended up coming to a sense of calm and accomplishment. One of my biggest sources of anxiety in my post-college life was how hard it is to find the time to do the things that are important to me, the things that make me feel like I am doing something important. Well, for one, applying to MFA programs involved a lot of research, reading, and writing. I had to do it while also helping the Dark Mistress move in, cooking, and cleaning (though not as much as I suppose I should), and working. My life wasn't in a good balance necessarily, but I managed to find the time to do it. And it was much, much harder than doing those things I like to do, like writing.

Second, I came to appreciate how much I really do love writing and why. I won't go into it here, but it feels like the past several years of my life have I slowly worked towards realizing that I'm happiest with life, and myself, when I'm being creative. When I'm trying to make something beautiful or striking or at least fun. It's something that seems pretty obvious to my friends, I don't know why it took me so long to figure out.

Lets see, 6 minutes. Other highlights from break:
The house is driving the Mistress and I nuts. It's so cluttered. We've simply run out of room to put things, and that means there's a lot still unpacked. We've made some great progress though. The living room is slowly becoming a nice place to be, and just today I cleaned up the Middle bedroom, which was a re-god-dammed-diculous disaster, rivaled only by those people with mental illnesses who can't manage to throw anything away.

The Mistress and I watched The Ballad of Jack and Rose, Into the Wild, and finished the series Six Feet Under, the finale of which had us both sobbing for what felt like a half hour. Assholes. I cut up my first whole chicken to make a crock pot recipe that was basically chicken, spices, zucchini, and broth. (It was delicious).

AHH! I'm out of time! We had an awesome new years, I played many video games, drank a fair amount of liquor, saw old friends, and ate out perhaps a little too much, but hey, it was winter break, man.

Maybe there'll be a part II tomorrow, maybe not.

Is There Even Such a Thing Broccoli and Bean Cassarole? I've never had.

At this rate my blog will soon be a sorry scattering of sporadic mea culpas. I'm busy. Very busy. Too busy to fix my broken computer. Too busy to organize my sock drawer. Too busy to read lengthy books, and too busy to think about writing for this.

In about a month I want to be done applying to MFA programs. My professor's fallen through, so I am relying solely on my own skill, wit, and taste to prepare my portfolio. This has meant long hours in dim lighting, sipping tea, blowing through my fingers to keep warm, and listening to music. I'm convinced its the most pleasure a person can experience alone without the aid of explosives and/or liquor.

(Note to anyone from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives: Just kidding! The most explosive thing I've ever messed with is broccoli and bean casserole, and I'd never dream of handling it while under the influence of alcohol! Like Nancy said, just say no!)

How I'm Spending My Summer Vacation

I think I have a serious problem, for only a troubled soul could turn five weeks off of work into something to stress about. I'm currently rounding out week three of five, and I've come to terms with my vacation time. I enjoyed my winter month off well enough, and last summer, this time, I found myself very busy. I visited my fabulous aunt Laurie, and spent time with my wonderful aunt, uncle, and cousins out in Illinois. I'm sad I couldn't make it again this year, but alas, the monies.

My problem, heading into these off periods, is I always set some lofty goals for myself which I somehow never manage to achieve. This July, my goal was to submit some poems out for publication, prepare for and take the GREs, and to finish the Mistress's theremin. Well, I'm registered to take the GREs in a couple of weeks, and I should be ready to send some work out soon. The theremin, slowly but surely, is coming along. However, I haven't spent as much time as I'd like writing, looking up information on schools, and preparing a critical writing sample, as I've been effectively sidetracked by computers not working.

I could go into a long drawn out story of all the things I've tried to get my computer working, but I won't, because really, who cares.

R.E.M. was amazing
Still no shower in my house
My garden is still growing

Really, I don't know what else to say. Anymore, I only spend time on the internet to hunt for answers to computer questions I have. I haven't kept up on people's blogs, of really, with people in general. Anyhow, you'll probably hear from me again after I'm back to work.

Digging in the Dirt

Monday I slept in my own bed for the first time in eleven days. The bathroom is an empty shell save for a toilet that drains, but does not flush. The rest of the house is a mix of supplies, tools, and my own displaced clutter. The only room left untouched is my bedroom, which feels like a sanctuary away from craziness. Yesterday I spent a couple hours replacing the dryer belt, which broke a week ago. If I thought it would have been difficult, I be surprised at how easy it was. Instead, I thought it would be easy, so of course it kicked my ass.

Last Friday the girlfriend and I took a trip to her home for the holiday weekend. It was nice to see her family again. Actually, it was more than nice. The Mistress showed me about the leavings of her past, and there's little I revere more than our personal childhood mythologies. She also continued in her lessons on how to shoot an SLR camera. Like, you know, a real film camera. I had a blast, and I can't wait to get the pictures back.

We got in late Monday night, and I had taken Tuesday off so I could get my car inspected at the place around the corner from D.M.H.'s house. I knew the tires were iffy, but I was hoping that they might pass and I would have a bit of time to shop around for a new set of skins. If they didn't, I figured it'd be a "hey, go buy some tire and bring it back to get your sticker." Instead I got "you failed on tires, and we couldn't get an emissions reading because the computer says there's not enough data. You'll have to drive the car around for a while until it resets. When you bring it back we'll have to re-inspect the car. That'll be $90."

I had my Monday all planned. I would drop the car off, then enjoy a quiet day to sit and write. A day with nothing going on and no one around. A day unlike any I've had in longer than I can remember. Instead, I figured I'd better try to get my car legal, so I ended up at Wal-Mart, where the cheapest tires were $70. For $75 they had some discounted performance tires, so I went with those. Two hours in Wal-Mart, then Three in the Meineke up the street to get an alignment and another inspection. At least inspection and emissions only ran you $50 there. At one point the guy working on my car came in with a concerned look, the kind you don't want your mechanic to have, and asked me if I just got my car inspected recently. I told him my story up to this point, and he said they should have explained to me that I have 30 days to come back and get my emissions re-checked free of charge. The first place didn't tell me this, even though I explained that I moved from a county where emissions checks aren't required, so I therefore didn't know how things worked. Assholes.

My choice at that point was to drive around and bring the car back on Saturday, hoping the computer gathered enough data, or keep driving it after the inspection ran out to give it more time. I chose for the latter, not wanting to waste any more money. I've never been pulled over, and I don't intend to start now. I'll see if I can get in this Saturday or Monday, and until then, cross my fingers. I will cross them also in the hope that my car's computer's got all the emissions data it needs, and that I don't need to take my car to Ford to have the computer diagnosed at a presumably high cost. Or, that my car fails emissions, which would also suck tons.

Somewhere in there my upstairs computer, the one do all my writing and audio stuff on, crashed. Could not find the operating system. This means hard drive difficulties. I've rescued my writing, but one hard drive is down permanently and the other still won't boot. Props go to my Linux booting iMac for being able to grab my writing from my crippled Linux hard drive, albeit at a turtle's pace.

I feel I've lost the past two weeks. It's exhausting, and I'm overwhelmed. On the exciting side, mom gave me some flowers, three pepper plants, and a tomato plant. I put them in the ground Monday, and it was kind of crazy. I didn't expect to have such a powerful experience, and I still don't understand it, but there was something about seeing all the critters, all the roots, the rusted bolts and pieces of glass hidden buried and forgotten half a foot below my yard that made me feel connected to this place in a way I haven't known. Every morning and afternoon on my way in and out I stop and check on my plants, more excited than I should be.

If You Wish To Be Remembered, Die Inside a Crawl Space

The dead squirrel(s?) smells a bit riper each day. The smell has gone from cabbagy to peppery, and it's getting to the point where I've come close to gagging. The woman who's office is across the hall planned a memorial for the squirrels, but of course it was on Monday, when I wasn't going to be at work. If it happened, I missed it. Also, part of the plan was a cross, which pissed me off. Who said these squirrels were Christan? I was thinking a nice secular wreath of peanuts or something.

Class is a bit frustrating. We've been holding workshops for the past couple weeks or more. Our workshops are run so that everyone gets a copy of everyone else's poem. We take everyone's poems home and write up comments for them. Having been told to look for the things that don't work, the first set of comments I wrote up focused only on that. I figured they'd understand that, if I didn't mention it, it must be working. When my poem was workshopped, the write ups I received had a lot of positive comments, which made me feel like quite the ass for being so harsh.
Workshops are a funny thing. I get a thrill when my poem's the target. Hours and hours are poured into a poem that I then hold out for everyone to tear it apart every which way they can. It's like field testing a prototype of a machine. You'll find the weak spots by seeing where it breaks. The key to not being heartbroken is separating myself from the work. Once I got past the notion that they're not invalidating what I have to say, just the way I've said it, I was free and in the clear. I love picking up the pieces of a poem freshly rended. It opens up opportunities I wouldn't have noticed before, and really, isn't it just like playing with Legos as a kid? Build something up, kick it all down, then build it again, better.
Still, there's something that does drive me crazy about workshops, and it's comments like “I just don't get it...” There's one student in particular who's a pro at giving such helpful information. Now, let's suppose that a good poem has a fine mix of mystery and straight talk. The straight talk will get you through the first couple readings, make you feel as if you at least understood what world the poem creates. The mystery, however, should be there enough to prompt you to read it repeatedly, to get joy out of teasing out the deeper meanings. When I first started reading poetry, I hated how it made me feel dumb for not understanding it immediately, upon the first read. It wasn't until I realized that the pros don't understand it the first time either, and that part of the joy is in the discovery, the unfolding of the mystery, that I first felt free to enjoy poetry at my own pace (and not feel dumb).
Now, I'm not going to say that my poem struck a perfect balance, but I will say that I think it made a damn good attempt. Most people either understood it right away, or came to understand it as they read it further or as it was discussed. This one student, however, could only offer “I guess it's supposed to make that kind of sense, but I think it should really have more things in it.” (Also, they didn't like my stanza structure because it didn't contribute to the meaning, and “we learned in class that the line breaks and stanzas we choose should mean something.” I understand how they seemed so arbitrary, considering they didn't understand the meaning the stanzas were to contribute to.)
When getting a piece workshopped, not all information is going to be on the mark. But, it still might speak to a problem elsewhere, so I try not to discount any of it. And, in the end it's my choice what to consider and what to forget. However, the student I'm been bitching about seems to be phoning it in. I don't think they read my poem more than twice. It's clear to me from this (and other incidences in class), that this student just isn't committed. I understand that one class may not be the most important thing in a student's life, but really, if you can't at least fake it, you're wasting your time as well as everyone else's.
The best part of all of this is, when it came time to workshop this student's poem, I didn't understand it one freaking bit. I laughed so hard at that. I guess I expected theirs to focus on the places that gave them trouble with mine. I must have read it twenty times, just to make sure it wasn't me. The problems were grammatical ambiguities (much like the pronoun soup above) that left too much up to question. I hope though that my comments went further than “I just don't understand” and were more helpful than the ones I received.

I actually planned to use this time to talk about some bigger stuff. Like, what the hell to do with my life, etc. But I think I might try to make a quick Peter Gabriel mix for the road trip I'm taking this weekend instead. I wonder if I can throw this together in the hour I have. There's so much to work with – you could easily make a PG mix in any mood. Damn.

Holiday Vacation SuperPost!

Back to work with me. I started yesterday, though I had a retreat to attend Monday. At first I thought it wasn’t too bad. I thought that if I could clear my head and stay aware of who I was and why I was here, I could better handle the stresses of work. That plan worked until I got on the phone with my boss. She’s high strung, and understandably so, but the moment I heard her voice darting from crisis to crisis I felt my blood pressure rise. Other people’s problems becomes her crisis which then I have to adopt. Week in, week out, until summer. Assessment: work is going to continue to blow.

I’ve wanted to post all during break, but it felt too daunting of a task, as each day brought more to share. Last post I wrote before break I mentioned I wanted to do something creative each day. What I had in mind was to write each day, if just for a little bit. No dice. I wrote word zero all break. What really sucks was I was working on a longer story on which I was making quite a bit of progress back in October, but in November something happened and I stopped making time to write. When I went to try during break, nothing was coming to me because I became foreign to that world I created. I got frustrated, bowed to the page, and gave up. I didn’t have time to mull on that for long as Christmas was coming and Santa had some business to attend to.

Back before the Dark Mistress and I were a “thing”, she once asked me, upon my mention of previous electronics experience, if I would be able to build a Theremin. I replied that yes, it’d be possible to purchase and build a Theremin kit, I imagine. The topic came up again a month or two ago, and apparently she’s always wanted one.

I remembered this six days before Christmas, and thus began my five day obsession with building my love a Theremin.


A quick google search revealed several kits online, but they were all fairly expensive. Then I came across a site that promised I could build my own for about $75, which was still more than I was willing to spend, but I couldn’t resist how awesome a project it could be.


Now what is a Theremin? If Wikipedia hasn’t told you by now, it’s a music instrument that is played without touching it. Traditionally there is a vertical antenna and a horizontal loop antenna. The distance between your right hand and the vertical antenna controls pitch, the distance between your left hand and the horizontal antenna controls volume.

The principle involves two oscillators, which are circuits that produce a waveform. (think of ripples in water… a rolling up and down wave like that) A Theremin uses two oscillators built and fine tuned to create identical waveforms. They are attached to the pitch antenna in such a way that the distortion of the electromagnetic field put out by the antenna by your hand throws the oscillators out of sync. If one oscillator is oscillating at 1100khz, and the other is oscillating at 1540khz, the difference between the two would create a tone at 440hz, which would be an A.

I knew very little of this going in. I had to start from scratch. I started Thursday when I etched my own pc board by printing his track layout on glossy photo paper and ironing it on, then soaking it in a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and hydrochloric acid. It was messier than I expected, and I didn’t feel quite right the rest of the night. By Saturday I had the first set of components in and tested.

The circuit is built so it oscillates around the frequencies of AM radio, so each oscillator it is tested by tapping on the coils and tuning the radio until you can hear it. This happened for me on Friday night, I believe, and was cause for much celebration. I'm pretty sure I ate a whole box of Runts. It was around this time Slim Jim stopped by.

I told Slim Jim of my Christmas Theremin project, and he ended up being a huge help. Though he wasn't able to directly solve any of my problems, he knows a thing or two about electronics, and just being able to explain a problem to someone is enough sometimes to clear a mental blockage. One of the problems I was running into in trying to get it working was there are a few parts that dangle loose whose position is essential cool noise production, so I set about mounting the project in a case before I went any further.

I recognized in one of the examples on dude's site a DVD shelf in which he mounted one of his Theremins. I happen to have two of those exact shelves: one in use, one in the basement. (One used to be Leggolamb's. Random Fact!) In the name of Love and Science, I cut into that mother. It was then that my long term vision crystallized: not just to build a working Theremin, but to build a case it could be packed up into and transported. What's the point in building this cool as hell thing if you can't take it to parties, right? Would I seriously give her a mess of boards and wires, when I could give her a hinged plywood masterpiece? It's without Slim Jim that I would have failed here, as he showed me some wood working basics needed so as not to look like a damn chimp tossing around Samsonite.

Once mounted to the shelf, it “came to life” for the first time. (Okay, once I mounted it to the shelf, realized I reversed polarity on a component or two, then remounted it. I was under the gun!) What had been a faint whistle earlier became a full bodied... louder whistle. Again, I was giddy. If I had another box of Runts...

It is just about one of the coolest things to experience for the first time. I have no idea why. Perhaps there's something fundamentally spooky about a speaker's whistling in response to how close I slip my hand towards and antenna. The interaction becomes intuitive very quickly, and every time I hook it up, twenty minutes of my life inexplicably disappears.

If Christmas is anything, it's a chance for those of us who get off on withholding to taunt and torture the hell out of our loved ones. In this case, it was the Mistress, who knew I was doing something related to a gift for her. By some miracle, she had no clue what was keeping me up nights and exposing me to Chlorine gas. My lie became “playing Half-Life”, which of course didn't hold water, but didn't tell her anything either. I never managed to finish the doors for the case, the wiring for the panel, or the volume control circuitry, yet it was all more than worth it to see the look on her face when she pushed her hand into the sweet field of radiation and heard a sweeping whistle come through a pair of computer speakers.


Christmas for me was a little strange. On one hand, it's the first time I've had to drive any distance to my folks place for Christmas. (Last year was the first time I wasn't staying there for some extended period of time, and that was disturbing enough.) It just made things feel different, more adult. On the other hand, my folks got me an XBOX 360, which I did not see coming at all. It was the first time in a long time I felt like a kid at Christmas: barely being able to wait to pry into my new toys. I'd wanted one for two years now, but I would probably never buy one. I could never justify it, and by the time I could, the next generation of consoles would already be out.

This is the first video game console I've ever had during the prime of it's run. I was given a Playstation year after the PS2 came out, and an Atari 2600 at the dawn of the age of Nintendo. Not that I'm complaining. I think it's for the best, as I know my attention span and I needed all the focus I could get. I'm just trying to express how much I enjoy its presence.

The time between Christmas and New Years is, frankly, a blur. D.M.H. and I hung out almost all the time and it was wonderful. I didn't get to play 360 as much as I wanted to, say, Christmas day, but D.M.H. was very accommodating. We were both really spoiled by seeing each other every day though.

For New Years, we stopped by Spanky and Zanzibar's place for some Taboo, then some Scene-It. Dark Mistress Hawthorne was billed as top seed against a mysterious figure with ties to the past. Named Skidmark. We played in teams, and D.M.H. was my (drunk) partner. I was so proud of myself when she didn't know the first question we were asked but I did. (Trading Spaces, thank you.) I, however, did not answer one answer correctly for the remainder of the three games we played, while our team went on to win every one. I have to say, we had Skidmark uncomfortably close to our tails most of the time. The Dark Mistress is, apparently, a half crazed movie trivia machine.

Shortly after that, she went back to work, and I turned my focus on the house. And the XBOX. Well, first the XBOX, then the house. Two weekends ago we visited Slim Jim and got to catch up with one of my favorite people from college, The Blue Zipper, whom I hadn't seen in over a year. It was fantastic to see her again. It was also super cool to visit Slim Jim for once and to see what it's like where he lives. Before we left, he gave us a video projector to try hooking up to the iMac. He'd picked it up at some point but had no use for it at the time.

So the remainder of my break was spent on three projects: cleaning the laundry room, turning the kitchen out, and setting up this projector. And wouldn't you know it, I somehow got all three done! My clothes are off the floor for the first time in months, for the first time since I've moved in I know what is in every drawer and every cupboard in my kitchen, and finally, I have to say there's no joy greater than getting lost in the mountainous crags of Commander Adama's four foot high cheek.

I'd post you some wonderful pictures, but at the moment I am sans camera, which isn't nearly as cool as being Santana, but you gotta go with what you know.