Aura again

         Was the light pulsating because I had accidentally gazed too long upon an overhead lamp, burning its glow into my retinas, or was my brain blazing with fire because I was getting a migraine?  There’s always a few seconds where I think maybe I just looked too long at the light.  There were spots in my eyes, a cluster of them in the lower right hand side of my vision, like a flower formed of glowing dots.  I thought the light had stained my eyes, that I had stared toward it overlong.  But wouldn’t that be weird, indoors, at nearly six pm?  It wasn’t like when I’m outside in daylight and encounter a blinding flash of sun reflecting in the mirror of a passing car.

         The cluster paused there a while before forming inevitably into the flaming ring.  And once that happened there was still a smaller horizontal line of bright white light inside it.  This was unusual, as was the placement of the ring, though that seems to be changing in recent months; it used to be always in the upper left hand corner, now it has become movable, in a slightly different position every time.  But once it settled into its classic flaming ring it was the normal routine, notwithstanding the horizontal glowing dash, and that faded and disappeared at some point as the ring grew bigger.  The circle flamed with a rainbow of colors, brightest near the top and one side, fading along the other side, the bottom almost completely muted out. 

         This burning ring filled my eye and my mind’s eye (shutting them doesn’t eradicate it), slowly expanding 'til I could see right through it to, as it were, normality.  Then it was so big it was just the outer frame of my vision, a pulsating firework moving out until it was just white lights flashing in my periphery, a shiny diamond necklace encircling my world.  Even this continued to expand until it was gone and I just waited for the pixels of my vision to stop flashing like strobes and for the lights to quit being so bright.

         

In the details

         I was discussing my mystery novel Gossip Kills with a friend the other day, and they told me that their one criticism was that it didn’t seem to have enough detail.  I’d heard another intimation of this too, when someone told me it was “like a screenplay.”  I took this as a comment on the sparseness of detail and the emphasis on dialogue (which was influenced by my love of golden age and noir mysteries), though maybe I read it wrong (and it’s true that I wrote three screenplays before I completed a novel).  Of course I welcome criticism at this stage in my career (trying to finish my second mystery novel).  I didn’t have a professional editor to help me with Gossip Kills; I didn’t even have a professional proofreader.  I did the best I could, obviously, but any critiques are priceless. 

         This “lack of detail” rings true and I’m glad it’s been brought to my attention, but it’s not even the only part of Gossip Kills that has room to improve.  The setting itself, the boring office of a bureaucratic health insurance company, carries some dullness with it – though I think I captured what I wanted to about this monotony and expressed it with humor.  Another arguable flaw is that the first murder doesn’t happen soon enough, that there is too much initial setup.  I’ve been aware of these “flaws” or weaknesses with Gossip Kills and I’m not repeating them in Split Screen (the one I’m working on now).

         This new insight about the amount of detail comes at a good time, because I was already working on that with Split Screen ,  trying to add that more detailed layer of writing (is it serendipity that I find myself briefly in Hollywood again, which is where the story takes place?).  I sensed that this was an area where I could improve.  It’s good that it was brought to the fore of my consciousness and can hopefully help point me in the right direction.

Bye Bye Tarot 3

         Beyond those experimental, obsessive years of late adolescence, I never revisited the Tarot cards consistently.  When I was twenty my apartment was broken into.  The Tarot cards had been (untouched) in my underwear drawer, and the thief, searching for hidden valuables, had pulled the cards out and dumped them, scattered them, all over my bedroom.  I remember thinking, while gathering them up, “have these been contaminated now?” It didn’t seem a very fortuitous thing for a supposedly sacred set of cards to have been through.  But, I thought, if they have any power or mystery it couldn’t be wiped out simply by a home invader dropping them, could it?  So I kept them.  I may even have used them in the following years, but that’s a long time ago now so the memories are vague. 

         I don’t even know how the Tarot cards were in my possession in recent times; I can’t remember if they were in Maine for years then I got them back, or if I’d had them in L.A. all that time and mailed them to myself back east.  This is how insignificant they were to me.  But then when I was back in Maine  going through various tough and confusing times, and finding the old Tarot cards, I decided to try them again.  Three, maybe four, times I did them.  The results were as inscrutable, vague and in need of serious interpretation as ever, and I just didn’t have the patience for it anymore.  Tarot cards may work, they may be a window to the truth.  But in order to get there you have to spend so much time thinking about yourself; the expression “naval gazing” comes to mind. 

         When I was moving this time and I was letting go of things left and right, deciding I didn’t need those Tarot cards anymore was an easy choice.  But I wasn’t going to give them to Goodwill.  Though I no longer wanted them, they retained personal significance for me; and no one else needs my used Tarot cards.  So I threw them in the trash.  It was almost a significant moment.  Whatever their value or lack of value, those cards had been with me at some emotional times in my life.  But I’ve decided to quit keeping things for sentimental value alone, and those Tarot cards just had to go.

Bye Bye Tarot 2

         When I was a teenager I would use (“do”) my Tarot cards.  It fit my magical thinking drenched adolescent anguish to seek answers unknowable. 

I still believe there may be something to Tarot, some unconscious connection, but that it is only discoverable with obsessive self-focus.  Maybe this is why a (storefront) psychic once told my friend Raina that it was unwise, even dangerous, to “do your own Tarot spread.”  Possibly the more objective nature of one person reading another’s cards really is better.  Of course I thought the psychic was just protecting her own industry by insisting that you pay a professional!

         So, even if it works, Tarot takes a lot of time plus a certain philosophy and desire.  I don’t say there’s nothing to it, but it’ll consume your time trying to decide if there is.  And even if it does seem to work . . . I think it’s very similar to astrology in that what you get is expressed through words.  Words can be interpreted by different people to mean different things, and if a horoscope or a Tarot reading is “supposed” to be significant to you, you will find a way to make the words meaningful.  

Bye Bye Tarot

         I threw out my Tarot cards.

         This may not seem like a big deal, but it is mildly significant that I have, somehow, had the same set of Tarot cards for twenty years.  I got them when I was fourteen.  I haven’t always “used” them, not even close.  They’ve been dormant more than active.  I can’t even recall having them in my possession most of the time.  But I did have them a couple weeks ago, when I threw them in the garbage. 

         The set was called (I believe) The Mythic Tarot, and it had beautiful illustrations based on Greek myths.  Lovely.  But Tarot cards reportedly originated in 15^th century Europe, and have no real connection to ancient Greece or its mythology.  The illustrations, and the book it came with, connected the Tarot symbolism to mythological scenarios and characters.  Looking back on it now, this seems stupid and a stretch, but as a teen I accepted it.  I liked Greek myth and I thought the pictures were pretty.

         Do you believe Tarot cards have some power, that they work to reveal reality, or at least your subconscious take on reality?  And do you believe that they are equally powerful no matter what form their symbols take, as long as the symbols have the same rough Tarot meaning?  Even if, say, they go back in time to adhere their symbols to those of ancient Greece?

Subliminal Advertising

         I first read the full story of the subliminal perception hullabaloo in Age of Propaganda (by Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson).  This debacle began in 1957 when a businessman/advertising expert named James Vicary reported that he had successfully experimented with subliminal advertising – messages flashed too quickly to be consciously seen – in a movie theater in Fort Lee, NJ.  He claimed that these messages telling viewers to buy popcorn and Coca Cola had effectively increased the sales of both.  After a few years of controversy, excitement, horror and many experiments, these results – any results – could never be duplicated.  In the end, the whole thing was pretty much concluded to be a publicity scam.

         Freud on Madison Avenue by Lawrence R. Samuel is a recent book about the use of psychology in advertising, particularly its golden years in the 50s and 60s, and it focuses on the subliminal issue in great depth.  It’s really fascinating how flipped out people got as soon as Vicary’s boasts were publicized.  Of course, it was the Cold War and Americans were particularly paranoid about brainwashing and Communists taking over; apparently some people worried that subliminal messaging would be used to get a Red elected president without our conscious knowledge. 

         Personally, what strikes me about the subliminal perception bubble is that subliminal advertising was really nothing, but people were so worked up about it, and even if it had been something, it would have been invisible, but that’s why they were so scared of it.  I find this thought-provoking or at least amusing.

         

Overcoming Book Hoarding

         Browsing in a used bookstore the other day, my (hopefully) erstwhile problem with book hoarding and my position on the slow climb to recovery were brought into sharp relief.  I did not succumb.  I didn’t buy a single book.

         I saw quite clearly how my ridiculous hoarding problem had manifested itself, and I wondered why I would ever have bought books when I already had so many still to read.  But it was hard getting over some of these deeply ingrained habits.  I looked for a book of Dashiell Hammet’s short stories, and probably would have bought this if they’d had it, but they didn’t.  But I saw some things I wanted enough that previously I would have bought them: a biography of Nathaniel West, some P.G. Wodehouse novels, Trilby by George du Maurier, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation. 

         In the past I would have bought these without hesitation because I knew I would want to read them in the future or near future, because they caught my fancy, and because apparently I enjoyed adding to my monstrous library.  But this time I paused and listened to my new fear of having too much stuff.  I asked myself if I planned to read the book right away or maybe next in line.  And if the answer was no, as it was each time, I said to myself, “when I want to read it, I’ll buy the book; it’s not like I won’t be able to find a copy then.”  This seems so simple and obvious, but I assure you: it represents a huge change from my previous era of out of control book hoarding.

God spoke to her through numbers

         I once worked in a store with a young lady who was mentally ill.  I’m not sure or can’t remember now what exactly her problem was, but she was about as insane as a person can be and still function and show up for a job.  She was very friendly and talkative (though it’s possible I’m only remembering her manic phases) and did interpretive dance: limb flailing hippie movements you might take as a joke but they weren’t.  She had a self-chosen name (wonder if she still goes by the same one?) and if I knew anything about her history, I forget it now.  

         What I do recall distinctly is one of the finest, most extreme examples of Magical Thinking I’ve ever encountered (yes, I think we all know it’s enhanced by insanity).  She said to me one time when we were working together, “God talks to me every day through numbers.”  Apparently the random numbers she saw as she went through life spelled out a significant message to her.  For me, if I were crazy or just a hair more eccentric than I am now, I could maybe see taking meaning from words or phrases I came across, but it’s difficult for me to conceive of a message sent through numbers, and this just makes the idea all the more fascinating.  I felt, when she told me this, a little twinge of jealousy.  I knew she was not sane and I certainly didn’t envy her in general.  Yet the idea, even if it came with lunacy, of receiving secret messages only you could read, sounded kind of fun and entertaining. 

         This is still, a good decade later, one of the strongest examples of Magical Thinking I’ve ever encountered.  I imagine, in order to receive these holy missives, she had to build up an intricate numerical philosophy in her mind.  Or maybe she just thought she had a coherent key between numbers and meaning but she really just made it up fresh every time.  Maybe she just said it because she thought it sounded good.  I’ll never know.

Editing in Limbo

         For the past couple weeks I’ve been getting used to a new home in a new city, and it has not been without stress.  I’ve even had an awful head cold, and I never get sick.  Basically I still have that limbo feeling: where am I, is this life or am I in a dream?  Also I haven’t worked (at a job job) in two-and-a-half weeks and this is enough to cause the willies in its own right.  I’ve been working on my writing still and I think I’m pretty committed, considering the lingering limbo.  The problem at first was endurance: I’d be working well but only for half an hour at a time.  I believe I see some improvement here so hopefully it continues. 

I’m in the editing stage on Split Screen – I have a manuscript, but as I know from my experience writing Gossip Kills that pretty much just represents the end of the easy part.  At this point you have the hard task of actually making everything work plus the frustrating repetition of toiling again and again on the same text, the same words.  Sometimes I have to discipline my brain so it doesn’t shut down or go into autopilot just because it’s read the damn thing before. 

I don’t have a real writing schedule yet since I don’t have a general schedule or a job.  But I’m trying all the same, still working on Split Screen.