My first thoughts this morning arrive with the noisy chatter of young Jays in our backyard coming in with the breeze through the open window. It feels like a summer day and, actually, summer is not yet over; not until the fall equinox later this month. And I start thinking about equinoxes and solstices and realize I am not real clear about how all that works and would we still have seasons if our planet was not tilted? Does our orbit of the sun actually have no effect on seasons? Because otherwise, the whole world would have summer and winter at the same time instead of the upper and lower hemispheres alternating like they do. And it occurs to me that I could easily look this stuff up on the Internet; probably on some kids’ science websites. I’m sure that these days there are plenty of kids who have a better grasp of some things than I do!
Knowledge is so much more accessible than it ever was before. I’ve forgotten much I learned in school, and there is much that nobody even yet knew back then but do now. Our species is learning at the speed of light these days, at least when it comes to some things. Ignorance is still abundant unfortunately, but I think it is so very, very important that education is becoming more and more available around the world. Hopefully it won’t be too long before knowledge is available to all. Eventually, one would hope, ignorance will virtually disappear.
But then there is the kind of willful ignorance that religious fanatics and other such idiots persist in. And I think that particular phenomenon is about power; power and control, as in ‘let’s keep people in ignorance so we can control them.’ Like the history of the Catholic Church, for instance; and a very bloody history it has had.
I think if I ever do write a novel it is obvious to me that it will have to deal with that subject in some way; something to do with religion. And, speaking of which – last night I was watching previews of some of the new fall TV series that are coming out and one of them is about certain humans suddenly going through an evolutionary step which gives them “super-human” and “psychic” type abilities. And that is exactly the kind of thing that I was playing with for my novel idea! They stole my idea, sheesh! But I guess most ideas are really not all that unique; people tend to come up with similar ideas at the same time. But I sure wouldn’t want to write a book that had people thinking I had copied the ideas from a TV series! But, oh well, and most TV shows don’t even make it past the first season – especially the ones I particularly like! We shall see.
One of these days I need to sit down and figure out what exactly my “Bugwump” story is really about. I need to get clear on that. It only feels like a confusing and overwhelming mess at present. And I need to get in my head the notion that this does not have to be a complete story of my life and there will be other books. I need to define the parameters around this one book and not be overwhelmed. And if I can manage to write one book to completion, then I can write another book – and on and on. I do not need to get myself so overwhelmed; this is why it has been so many years. I need to define one project and then DO IT. And then on to the next. I can do this!
You know, the main reason that I keep getting so far behind on my blog posts is that once I write something in my notebook, it’s been hard for me to re-write it later for my blog. But now I remember what Natalie Goldberg says in her book – that you have to ‘attach back‘ to it so it’s real again. So sometimes when I have trouble editing what I’ve previously written, I have to put my mind back there and then can recreate it and let the words just come again. But another thing I have realized is that instead
of recreating everything I’ve written, often I can simply just type my original words and with very little editing it is fine – using more of what I originally wrote, instead of taking the “gist” of it and thinking I have to re-write the whole thing. Maybe I can make this task less time-consuming; that would be good.
(I love this graphic! I “borrowed” it from HERE.)