Dactyl

No, not that kind of Dactyl. Thanks to Alex Mellen (http://amediting.blogspot.com/) for reminding me to make this pun.

Have I told you about my Creative Writing class? It's wonderful. Professor Bowman is one of my favorites; a youngish man (mid 30's?) with messy brown hair swept off to one side, who wears worn suit-jackets with jeans and beige button-downs. Sometimes, the jackets have elbow patches. Those are my favorite days.

He's a poet who also knows about other forms of writing, especially creative nonfiction, so the poetry sections are always especially interesting. Today, he discussed various elements of rhyme and meter. All the professor's chatter inspired my muse to start musing, so, while he talked, I scribbled a quick poem in my notebook, which went something like this:

Dance on the graves of the ocean of snakes as they wriggle about your knees,
Shoot down the moon on the guardian's tomb in the forest without any trees.

Take all the fire of the hearthrug's desire as you turn it all cold and gray,
And hear ye the bleat of the murderous sheep while the shepherd is away.

"I want you to write a structured poem," Professor Bowman said, interrupting my scribblings. "Use one of the poetic forms I just talked about. Every time I give this exercise, some students say that working with a structure is really frustrating for them, and others say that it's really freeing."

As I observed the lines I'd just jotted down, a sneaking suspicion took me. So, I measured the rhythm, and found that, sure enough, I'd already completed the exercise. The poem I'd just written was a dactyl, with a few deviant syllables.

Dactyls take the form of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables, such as the word longitude. Lon-gi-tude. Get it? So, in my poem (/ stands for stressed; ^ stands for unstressed):

      /      ^   ^        /      ^   ^    /    ^   ^      /      ^     ^      /    ^    ^   /      ^        ^
Dance on the graves of the ocean of snakes as they wriggle about your knees,

Get it now? I think that's correct, except the last line of the poem isn't a correct dactyl, I don't think, and I adjusted the other lines very slightly to fit. But you get the idea. I find it interesting that I used this form without intending it, or even knowing what it was. Seems as if the ideas of meter and rhythm are wired into us, created by the proliferation of music and poetry that we're bombarded with on a daily basis.

Apologies

My apologies, friends, for the long absence of words.  I promise, they will return someday, and we will all rejoice.  In the meantime, watch this hilarious video: Animator vs. Animation IV.  Possibly my favorite video of the internet.

What excuses can I give to garner your forgiveness?  School has been crazy.  Life has been crazy.  But, if I was truly dedicated to this blog, it's not actually crazy enough to keep me from posting.  I suppose I'm just not dedicated enough, although I enjoy sharing my stories, and I've been working on other writing projects.

Another reason for my absence: most publishing venues count blogs as real publications, and so if a publication stipulates that it only accepts unpublished work (as many do), then anything I share to this blog can't be submitted to more credible options.  That's a big drain, and most projects I'm currently working on are for magazines or contests of that sort.  Even so, if I actually get work published, then I (tentatively) promise to post it here, after!

Enjoy your lives!  I'll try to get something up eventually.

My future.

This is my future, people.  Note: I was in no way involved with the creation of this comic.  The proper website can be viewed by clicking on the link.

I did not make it.  I live it.

http://poorlydrawnlines.com/comic/the-difference/

Transcendent Hope

Coach died today.  He was a mentor to me, a mentor to almost every student in my school, from the kindergartners to the seniors.

"Uncle" Jay Tolar did something incredible.  He had hope, which isn't easy in the face of a disease as crushing and terrifying as ALS.  Sometimes, people exaggerate pleasant qualities after someone dies, but I doubt that any who knew Coach Tolar could ever suspect that of him.

From childhood, I remember him bouncing.  Brimming with energy.  Constantly laughing, and making others laugh.

You know something?  Even when I "grew up" and coach grew older and ALS paralyzed his body, that's still how he seemed.  The wheelchair didn't confine him, somehow.  He confined IT.  His energy and liveliness transcended it, and he still made everyone laugh -- sometimes using the paralysis to help him imitate a zombie, and sometimes singing hilarious songs while machines sucked the phlegm from his chest, since he could no longer cough.  He had hope, and he laughed at the disease.

His faith gave him hope, and he gave this hope to others.  Even in his death, his incredible family and those of us blessed by his life still have hope; hope that we will see him again, someday, and hope that his body is now strong and free, dancing with even more unquenchable energy before God's throne than he always displayed on this earth.

I thank God for Uncle Jay Tolar's life, and I thank him for a hope bigger than paralysis or disease or death.  In the meantime, whenever I'm tempted to lose hope in any struggle of my life, I think I'll remember that Coach did not.

My Manhood is a Research Question

I get some interesting questions, working as a library research assistant. Not all of them involve research.

During my shift the other day, a woman approached the front desk somewhat warily, peering at me first from one side and then the other. She hesitated several feet away, perhaps debating any further approach, and still sizing me up. I smiled a greeting. 
"Hi, can I help you with anything?"
Finally coming to a decision, she fully approached the desk.
"Yes . . . are you Rachael?"

I have a beard.

And that woman turned out be my supervisor for the day.

20,000 words . . . lost.

WARNING: the following recounting is not for the faint of heart.  It's not a happy little tale, not a bedtime story for your children.  I'm still shaking.

Isn't technology great?  The first computer I ever used for storytelling was my parents' clunky Toshiba, running Windows 95.  It crashed, of course, stealing the pitiful beginnings of a manuscript I'd stored there, along with my motivation to continue writing the story.  Eventually, however, I did continue, and it endured into my first full-length novel: Destiny's Mistake.  A few other crashes frightened me along the way to this completion, but I think a month's worth of progress was the most I'd ever lost.

Until now.

I thought I'd learned my lesson, and over the years, backups grew more and more frequent.  Losing a few hours work every now and again -- mostly due to the haphazard electricity in Nigeria, where I grew up -- put the fear of technology in me.  Yes, I know better than most about the importance of regular system backups.  But I've never been very good at learning lessons.

Today was typical: I opened my computer and waited for Windows to resume.  This semester I'm trying to spend an hour a day working on personal writing, unrelated to school.  Microsoft's OneDrive cloud backup is my preferred method of storage: it's a supposed fail-safe against crashes, and is also convenient for accessing writing on devices other than my laptop and tablet.  The technology gods, however, are not always benevolent.

As I'd done a hundred times before, I accessed OneDrive and clicked on my God's and Chaos manuscript (early stages of the rough draft are posted on this blog).  But I instantly saw that something was wrong.  A small "x" was posted in the corner of the document.  When I tried opening it, an error message appeared: "the file cannot be accessed because parts are corrupted."  A chill trickled into my skull, but I tried again . . . and again, the same message greeted me.  The details link expounded on my file's corruption and the loss on my hope.

This document is 20,000 words long: far from completion, but still extremely significant.  It represents days and days of writing time -- basically my entire summer, plus some -- and I'm rather proud of various portions.

But there was no denying the situation: the document was gone.  Vanished.  Removed from this mortal plain.  With little hope of recovery.

Scenarios and possibilities scurried through my thoughts: the last time I'd opened this document was on the machine at the library's front desk.  Could that be a factor?  Should I contact I.T. at the library?  Surrender my computer to a techie friend?  Contact Microsoft?

It felt like static electricity was prickling my brain.

Alright, stay calm, Luke.  A brittle hope: try accessing OneDrive through the website rather than through the app on my computer.  I tried, praying fervently . . . I accessed the website, clicked on the folder . . . the list of documents stood before me, and like an angel of judgement, I picked the document in question.  As I did this, I noticed that all the other documents displayed script in their pictures, but this one just appeared blank.  (I'm sure there are technical terms for all these things, but I haven't the faintest idea what they are.)  For a moment, my hope teetered as the blue loading screen flashed before my eyes, just as it had in the failed attempts . . . and then the document opened, complete with text.  I scrolled to the end.  Everything was there.

But you can swear your life on the knowledge that there's now a second backup on my computer, and I'll probably make another on my external hard-drive.

For the cloud is mysterious.  Who can fathom its ways?

Teddy's Story Joint

I was in no way involved in this video's creation, but it's bodaciously geekish enough that I felt compelled to share it.  No, "bodaciously" is not a proper conjugation of bodacious, but it makes me feel more like a geek, as does this entire sentence.