Freezing Rain and Writing

Sitting at home in front of my computer, taking a break from writing a new-old story, taking a break from thinking about the sword of Damocles hanging over my head in the form of a 13-page paper I have to write that's due next week...and because I don't have enough to do, I am writing this. This may lead to some rather interesting conclusions about my working habits...

...So, my story takes place around 300 years in the future, after humans and other species have learned the art of space flight. Its main protagonist is a 36-year-old man named Dennis Gallagher--a black-haired, blue-eyed Irish-Scot who works as a linguist for the official interplanetary governmental law-enforcement/espionage agency. Forced early from his holiday on a tropical planet to work on a new case with agent Sofia Vega, a woman of mixed human-North Azanni blood who has silver hair and a Voice you wouldnt believe, the predictable love-loathing story unfolds. Dennis likes his desk-job, Sofia is all ice and fire, and together they must decipher the twisted nursery-rhyme messages that accompany a series of bombings on various planets in order to avert utter mayhem in the known galaxy at the hands of the KALI criminal organization. There's action, there's history, there's mystery, intrigue, and murder, and of course, intertextuality. And of course, despite some early difficulties, they fall in love.

It's all a ball of typical twigs...

(Though I have made some minor changes in plot, I sarted this story more than 30 years ago and its pretty much still the same story.)

Thoughts, Connections, and the Scottish Thing

Grasses at Culloden Moor

Red Trees at Bannockburn



The end of Scotland, and the beginning...

I heard a poem yesterday written and recited by the poet, Alan Bissett, called "Vote Britain"

Here it is, from his blog:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Z-znkbMzi4A

Injustice is wrong. Intolerance is too. In spite of the world being ugly, "Tha an saoghal fhathast àlainn." (The world is still beautiful) Sorely Maclean

That's all.

(Oh--and I figured out how to get my own pictures on here. I took these in Scotland in the summer of 2010.  

Saor Alba Gu Brath! Freedom for Scotland in Our Lifetime?

Brataichean na h-Alba air na Criochan

Finally! Finally, Scotland may be--WILL be able to determine her own course, after so many centuries as the thrall of England. It matters not the blood, for there is no pure anything anymore and never was. Robert de Brus was Anglo-Norman. William Wallace was a North Briton. What does matter is the sense of identity and self worth a people have. It's not who we are as much as what we believe.

For nearly all of my life, even as a kid, although I have perhaps three-eighths "Scottish" blood amid the Welsh and Scandanavian, I have identified myself as Scottish. Don't ask me why because I don't know. (It wasn't brainwashing from Dad either!!!)

It was only when I became an adult and began to study and understand just what it means to be Scottish--to "hae even a wee drap o' the bluid", diluted as it is by a hundred-sixty-one years and other bloodlines (most of them British in some way)--that I could see just how wrong the Union was.

Freedom for Scotland means much more than having a place to call home. It means restoration of a nation's sovereignty and independence. This is not secession from Great Britain or a divorce from the Union. There should never have been a marriage in the first place. It was a shotgun wedding, made under duress, and should be annuled, with reparations.

How will it end?

I remember how it began, this new movement, this confidence after so long beneath the thumb and contempt of England...

I just happened to be watching TV in 1999, the day the devolved Scottish Parliament opened, and I cried like a baby when Sheena Wellington sang Rabbie Burns' "A Man's a Man for A' That", and then to see everyone in the place stand and fill it with one of the greatest songs ever written! (I learned it as sung by the Corries, those great musical revolutionaries, one of whom wrote "Flower of Scotland")

"So, here's tae us, man. Wha's like us? Damn few, and they're a' deid!"

Here's to a living, breathing, sovereign Scotland, a real nation again. Not without problems--freedom is a messy business. But the Scots have proven their mettle all around the world. Let them prove it at home, without England.


The following video lays to rest some of the fictions manufactured by those who wish to stay with the status quo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?src_vid=iINm7mtg8BE&annotation_id=annotation_885265&feature=iv&v=5udgzGhkvT4

Talking Too Much

Someone ought to duct-tape my mouth shut forever.

Chì Mi’n Geamhradh Anns a' Ghaoith...

"Chì mi'n geamhradh anns a' ghaoith

Chan eil an sneachd fada bhuainn

Sgothan dorch' 's na craobhan ruisgt

Tha an oidhche nochd fuar"

Runrig

Last Fall...

At Mom's old house...

I see winter in the wind...in the slant of the light, in the looming darkness, in the dread of October, in the long blue shadows cast by the smoky saffron light. The leaves are turning.

Tha na madainn fionnar. Tha an fheasgar goirid. Tha an oidhche dorch agus eagalach. Tha na duilleagan a' tionndadh. Tha mi glè bhronach agus muladach. Tha mi fo chùram...Cha toil Geamhradh.

I hate winter. One might wonder why I want to move back to Montana. Crazy I guess. It's the light. Really.

Apparently I have seven followers. I don't know who you all are, but thanks for following. My computer is 63 in dog years.

Remembrance of Nine-Eleven

Above the Stillwater River, Montana



I am about as far from the Twin Towers as it is possible to be, although in 1970 I was in New York City when the towers were being built. I think I saw them...

I was on my way to work that day at the frame shop...later I could only watch  in horror as the planes flew into the buildings, and I could only watch once.

As I listen on NPR to the ceremonies happening and the comments being made today at Ground Zero, I am often moved to tears by the simple and poignant words spoken by those who survived, and those who lost loved ones on that day, in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington D.C. I too remember all of those lost since: soldiers and civilians and inhabitants in Afghanistan and Iraq, on the streets of our cities, in Somalia, Libya, Africa--everywhere that people lose their lives to senseless violence, and there is so much of it in the world.

Ten years ago--how time moves us through our lives, as we remember those we've lost, greet those being born, contemplate the lives we have, the goodness of people juxtaposed with the evil of people. As human beings we each have both of these within us--the brightest and darkest of impulses. And part of being human, I suppose, is learning to discern between these, and all their shades of gray, and choose our journeys on the myriad pathways through life. They lie before us like the convoluted, shifting streams of a river delta, confusing, misleading, intertwined. And despite how it looks to us small beings, who believe we are each alone in our little rivulets, each of these streams is connected in some way to all of the others, and eventually they all lead  to the same ocean.

I am changed by the events of 9/11--every one of us is, in countless ways; altered in ways that cannot be exactly articulated, and perhaps have no need to be articulated. 

Life goes on. It continues inexorably, until we are gone and dust, and even then it goes on without us.

"Arise soul

soar above the singing river

go lying down into the ground

quickened by the stream

when all is said and done

the race moves on."   Runrig, from Running to the Light

"Eventually all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters."  

Norman Maclean A River Runs Through It

Primordial ripples from the basement of time, Missoula, Montana, 2007

In the end we are dust.

Light At the End of Both Tunnels

More moony writing

Progress...

Well, it's been a busy week and no rest in sight. We spent the Labor Day weekend in Montana on a whirlwind mini-holiday to visit my son in Helena. My daughter came too, so it was a real delight to be with them both. We visited my sister in Butte, and also my former in-laws, whom I hadn't seen for several years. Unfortunately when you divorce someone, you divorce their family as well. They are lovely people and I've missed having them in my life.

The painting was finished in the studio last week, except for the window trim. The three desk-cabinets arrived today--a couple of weeks early; those will have to be put together soon so that I can reassemble my workspace.

There is light at the end--a bit of delayed gratification because we're gone again this weekend, and I start both my Gaelic classes soon, and have to finish my graduate-level course in education as well. I'm mentoring two girls on their senior projects this year, and of course I'm yearbook advisor again. Last year's book was awesome--probably my best ever. I'm very proud of it.

And the other tunnel...retirement. A few years, I tell myself. If they go as quickly as this one has, it'll be no time and we'll be making our home in Montana. Some days this notion is all that keeps me going. I just hope the light I see isn't an oncoming train.

Note to my followers: If you read this, please know that I cannot access who you are. I now have six, according to my dashboard, but they do not appear on the dashbord or the blog itself. So if you could just let me know who you all are by leaving a comment (if you want to) that would be great. Thanks.