A NOVEL ENDING

For more than three years as many as ten people lived here in my office. They were of my invention yet had lives of their own.

Three years ago I broke my left leg. The importance of this and distinguishing which one lies only in the fact that four years ago I had my right leg surgically repaired. It had been broken nine years earlier and never fully healed. My life has in some ways then, been measured by these episodes of leg damage, like markers along a highway.

The cast was from hip to toes. I was confined to home most of the time. After two months, I ran out of books of any interest, games to play, and crossword puzzles to do. For reasons not at all clear to me now, I wondered what it would be like to write dialogue. I have written all my life, but never done it. I was vaguely aware that there were rules about how it is done. I have also never writtten fiction. All of the writing I have done in my life—one should not count the political speeches—has been non-fiction. This lack of knowledge of the rules and format was not a barrier to my trying. It is hard to find something I will not try just because there are rules of which I am unaware.

I wondered what it would be like to write a story of two people explaining themselves to each other only through the spoken word as written on the page. That is how it began. As I did it, I began to see a beginning and an and end to a story and I rushed from one to the other with little regard for rules just to get it set down so I would not forget it. That done, I realized there was real work involved now. I needed not only to understand the rules, but also find a voice for each character, a time and a place for the story, and all manner of other details. Thus, three years have passed, the leg has long ago healed, and life as I know it has resumed, and I have had these two people and their friends, who do talk a great deal, yet need narrative to help them along their way now and then, living with me all this time.

Writers often tell of reading things the next day and wondering who had written it. This doesn’t happen to the non-fiction writer since they are writing about events and there are a set of facts or a piece of history to set down in what one hopes is eloquent prose. In a novel, there so many variables such as tone of voice, anger, fear, petulance, greed, and emotions in the voices and the moods of the characters. I was astonished to find it true. These people took over, they wrote about themselves it seems, and I as humble servant, provided the word processing and only followed along.

After my last adventure on the Oregon coast, it seemed time to finish this thing, this novel of mine. I was close to finding the right voices, creating the right words in the right order so that these people would be understandable to me and perhaps to others.

These people were of course dysfunctional or they would not be in a novel. As much as I enjoyed creating them and living with them and their myriad problems and successes everyday here in my cell-like space, I was growing tired of them, and they of me I should think. After all, none of us was getting any younger or more interesting. I read the book by my estimate, between 29 and 35 times from front to back and back to front and middle to each end. I changed them, I coddled them and cajoled them, I lowered their voice, I raised it, I made them more appealing or less so. I gave them new friends, I took away old ones, as some characters left as the story developed along quite different lines than I had originally imagined. Whole chapters came and went, added because they were needed, deleted because they represented some repetition or other nonsense even I could not fully appreciate or understand.

On Thursday night, I pushed the final keys that sent the proofs to the publisher. I will live in terror now until I have a book in hand and am sure that there are not just as many mistakes in grammar, syntax, and spelling as there were before they were read. After that I am sure I will be equally afraid that no one will understand this fiction that came from somewhere inside my head to the printed 500 plus pages that now embody something called “Sunset House.”

It was written down with care since it was there on my "Bucket List." It was somewhere in the top ten of things left to do, close to bungee jumping and above going scuba diving again. “Write a novel” has now been lined through.

It is done, and I will soon hold it in my hand and rejoice in its creation even if I am the only one that understands it and is glad that it was created at all. Such is the work of a wordsmith. We write to satisfy our own egotistical needs. If we are very lucky, we find an audience for our words. They do not matter so much, that audience. The memory of creating these---to me real—people was what brought me my pleasure. Should the reading of it by others bring them a smile, a moment of peace, a laugh, or a thoughtful moment, it will surely please me greatly to know I have contributed a moment to their lives.

The files have been backed-up into storage. All traces of these characters have been removed from my computer. They are now a memory. I will wonder about them from time to a time. Even now, I suffer the literary equivalent of separation anxiety.

I will post something when the book is published. It will be available through both Amazon and The Barnes and Noble web sites, but alas, unless I find a new talent for marketing in a life marked by the inability to sell guns in a riot, it will not be in any bookstore you know. It is published by iuniverse, a division of Barnes and Noble, in case someone should be foolish enough to want to read it.

The royalties that come to me from this printing will be passed on to the relief and rebuiding efforts in Haiti, likely to Doctors Without Borders, a group that has spent many years there and will spend many more. Should anyone be foolish enough to buy it, at least the profits will be for a good cause.

The writing, to paraphrase the recently late and iconic J.D. Salinger, is for the writer’s pleasure, and not for the profit it might bring. Of course, the cynic in me notes that he said that after the second printing of the wildly successful Catcher in the Rye.

Now I have turned my attention to planning my annual pilgrimage to the Valley of the Sun to immerse myself in my passion for the game called baseball and the men who play it so well. Then it will be April and time to be back on the road for three months. The Smoky Mountains seem to call again this year. I was there seven years ago and likely missed more than I saw. It will be warm there then and warm will be good come April and May. The proud road warrior, and my faithful companion, La Coachasita, will be ready after a few minor repairs. She fights stubbornly onward at 108,550 miles, and shows no sign of her age. From her acceleration, it is clear that she has a renewed zest for a trip.

In a few months then, this travelogue called Reamus will continue. I apologize for his absence in the humility of knowing he was likely not missed by many or all that much.

I have been reading your blogs with pleasure these past few months while the “clerical work” of galley proofing and cover design has been done. Thank you for continuing to educate and amuse me with your writings and photography. I hope you will find something in the scribbling here come spring that will do the same.

Going Home

What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.
---William Henry Davies, “Leisure”

There have been longer trips. There have been trips more challenging. There have been few that have been as peaceful and fun. La Coachasita provided some moments of concern but returns in good shape with only small wounds to remind me of this northwest adventure.

I saw old friends, old places, and new places, met new characters, had excellent weather and except for the one storm, it remained warm until the end… As I left the Redwood Coast on Wednesday there was frost on the ground and the cold weather was clearly coming. The wind that had been suspiciously absent most of the trip was up, and it felt colder than it probably really was.

It was time to move south. My last stop was in the Santa Yenez Mountains behind Santa Barbara for three nights. It is a favorite place where at migratory birds from eagles hawks, ducks on the lake, and song birds to numerous to catalogue or name can be seen this time of year. The weather turned warm on the last day as the clocks changed and it seemed a good time to go home.

The trip plan, as the poet said, was to find a place I liked “to stand and stare.” It is good for the body and the soul, something we should all do now and then. I have seen television once in six weeks, read two newspapers and generally turned down the cacophony of the appliances of the world to find the serenity that can come with such silence. It would seem I missed little except the continuing saga the news reports of things there when I left and some boy who was and then wasn’t in a balloon somewhere in the Midwest and two Continental Airline pilots-- now former pilots-- who forgot they were en route to Minneapolis.

It is nice to have such wonderful weather to end the trip. Surprising this large and now green park due to the six inches of rain last week is quiet. The fishermen are at the lake for the day, but the campground is largely unused.

There are exceptions. An LA flock of four thirty somethings in a motor home and a trailer arrived on Friday, unloaded two mountain bikes, four bicycles, a remote control plane and a kite of vast proportions. They are affable bunches who yet wear their wireless phone devices even while kite flying. I am not sure have ever seen so many toys come with four people who have spent the last two days either sitting and laughing, or sitting and eating. I was fully prepared for more noise than I thought I would find necessary but so far they have collapsed into the arms of Morpheus early and remained there late. I will no doubt wake them all when I pull out tomorrow from across the wide road here.

The only other constant companions until today was a man and wife who, so far as I could tell, never uttered a word while in camp, insisted on parking in the space next to me (there were many others available) and were actually in the park and awake or out doors for perhaps six hours in two days. At about one today, I came back from the lake and found they had gone. This is not the sort of place that attracts those who park and go off to see the sights. This is the sight they come to see usually as it is miles from any town. While here and out, he wore a sweatshirt advertising a tattoo parlor, a straw hat and smoked a large cigar. When they arrived, she remained in the truck until trailer had been parked and arranged. When it was done, she ambled in and an hour later they left and returned around midnight.

Somehow, this seems all the confirmation I need that I am back in Southern California.

Home will be a good place to be tomorrow. Thank you all for coming on this rather short—for me at least—trip of 2200 miles. I have enjoyed your company, your e-mails and posts on the blog. Spring is the next significant trip with a book to publish between now and then. I will be going I am certain, where is yet a question. North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains have only been cursorily explored and that is in my mind now.

But much will happen between now and then, so we shall see.

There will be pictures later and perhaps some words over the winter. I hope you all stay well and stay in touch.

THE FAIRY TALE ENDS

The will be no championship in Anahiem this year. The Los Angeles Angels of Anahiem lost the American League Championship to the New York Yankees in the sixth game in the first hour of this morning Eastern Daylight Time.

The Angels had won two of the three games played in California and nearly forced a seventh and deciding game in New York. Shortly after huge clock in the outfield struck midnight and while over 50,000 people in the stadium held their collective breath, Gary Matthews Jr., the son of a former major leaguer, took one last mighty swing.

He missed.

"This was a special group," Mike Scioscia their manager said after it was over, "but they were the better team. " Mike reflected on a reporters question about the long season and said that he will not soon forget this group, what they had fought through this remarkable season full of injuries, losing streaks, and a tragedy most had never experienced in their young lives that was so much larger than the game these men play. They are gone now, this team that carried Nick Adenhart's memory and his jersey forward every day and wherever they went all year. Many will leave for other teams and more money, others will be traded, some will retire, and some will come back. As a group, as of today, it no longer exists and will never be together again.

That's baseball.

Eight months ago, in Tempe Arizona, in the warm sun of late February, more than 100 men and boys came together in their odd three-quarter length pants. Scioscia's immediate task was to fashion a team of 25 of them that would stay together through the next eight months as a team and win. There were questions. There was not enough pitching.The remarkable first baseman from last year was gone. The wondrous right fielder with the improbable Russian and Latino name of Vladamir Guerrero, now older and more than a step slower still wanted to play everyday. The gentlemanly left fielder, Garret Anderson, the soul of the franchise in the view of many fans was gone, traded in his last years because he too was now more hitter than fielder. This is the way of baseball. The ebb and flow, the kids and the veterans, the greats, the nearly greats, and the never will be either one, who come to the valley every year. It is up to the Scioscia and the coaches on this team as it is on all the teams there and in Florida to sift through them and decide who stays an who goes and who plays and who sits. A team's complex mixture of chemistry, mental toughness.,and physical ability is an erector set that must be constructed in these busy early days of spring in the desert. It is done in the talented minds of the coaches, instructors, scouts, and ultimately the manager.

When they came away in late March, there were still troubling issues for Scioscia and his staff. There were questions that could only now be answered during the season in the sometimes grim grind of the 164 game schedule in six months before them. The pundits said that the Texas Rangers were good enough to beat this team and win the Division this year. The sardonic Scioscia, as highly respected a manager as there is in the league, gave the stock answer, "We'll see. That's why we play the games."

The bad things came early. Injury plagued the regulars, Scioscia struggled to find others to fill the holes and give them a chance to keep winning while the others healed. He found the answers in odd places. The rookie fist baseman did all he was asked to and more making last years loss of Mark Teixeria (ironically to the Yankees) seem less problematic. Young Erick Aybar became an outstanding shortstop. Pitchers who had been ordinary, became very good. John Lackey took the ball every fifth day and won or kept them in the game. He became the definition of what baseball calls a "stopper," a pitcher who does not let a two game losing streak become three. Then Nick Adenhart was lost to a tragedy so unlikely the team first spiraled and then made him their inspiration for the rest of the year. After his death the team lost a lot until reminded by Scioscia, in an emotional team meeting, that Nick would have expecteded more of them. They apparently agreed and won 23 of their next 30 games and kept going, with Nick's jersey with them always, even doused with champagne when they won the Western Division.Tori Hunter, the young, strong, and remarkable center fielder and team spokesman who had helped Nick acclimate to the major leagues, now made it his personal goal to win the World Series so that Nick's family would have a championship ring.

Yet on this chilled night in New York, eight months and 171 games after they began their quest, they came up short, because they met a team that was better, that had its own inspiration, chemistry, superb pitching, and better hitting to defeat them. There is no shame in that.

They were a special group with a special goal and tried as hard as their talent would allow to reach it. That they failed is not the point. That they tried, and came that close is what should make them proud. They had banished the Boston Red Sox in three straight games to get here. They came within two victories of doing with lesser talent but perhaps greater emotion, what they set out to do when they had gathered those many months before in the Valley of the Sun and were molded into this group that lived, laughed and cried together for the past eight months.

They are gone now. The locker where Nick Adenhart's uniform and baseball cleats resided these last 171 games is gone too. Next year, Mike Scioscia will find a new group waiting for him in Arizona. From them, some from this year, some from trades, some from free agent signings, and others from the minor leagues, he must put the right pieces in the right places once again. It will be a new group, with new talents and new chemistry. He and his staff will mold them, motivate them to overcome the shortcomings of this year and try again to somehow reach that which eluded this year's "special" group by so small a margin.

That's why they play the games.



Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has struck out.


From"Casey at the Bat"--- by Ernest Thayer, June 3, 1888, The San Francisco Chronicle