City of Legends

Weird week?  Yeah.  Weird week.  Everyone I usually talk to is off on various tangents.  The people I usually don’t have a lot of time with are filling in the gaps, some aggressively.  To whit, in the last 48 hours:

I have had three different women confess that they love me.  None of whom I’d have suspected before.

I had a lengthy discussion with a Government networking engineer on the virtue of Po Boy sandwiches.

I have written dozens of fragments of poems.  Not full length pieces, just phrases and metaphors, like I am shaking the crumbs out of the Oreo bag (which is, in and of itself, a great image.

Reminded several friends to wish a happy birthday to an old friend I am out of touch with (but cautioned them not to tell them it was me who reminded them).

Helped my son, Dante, build a 4-generation family tree, filling in some interesting elements along the way.  For instance, my maternal Grandfather was 39 years older than my maternal Grandmother (the one who is now 97 and recently broke her hip).  And I, my father, and his father were all born between August 1st and August 18th, must be something about the month of November and DeVault boys named William (note, had they not been a month premature, my twin sons would’ve been born in August, as well…).

Laid down a screeching guitar track for my next CD, to accompany some cathartic poetry I have recently produced.  Be afraid.  The cats are being…circumspect.

All in all, interesting times.  At least, to me.  And since it is my life, that’s what counts.

It’s a bit different this year than last, but I am well.  The writing is strong, the readers are appreciative, and I still control my own fate.  That’s always nice.

Got to see my Grandmother over the weekend.  A strange visit, as she was in and out of reality.  At 97, though, I hope I am as strong and vital as she is.  The funniest part of the visit is when she accused one woman who works at the facility of looking at me "funny".  She kept asking her "Why are you looking at him funny?" then turning to me and asking me if I noticed.

I’d noticed.  Although I wouldn’t call her looks "funny". 

I am compiling my master list of blurbistas for the new book (I take science of "blurbology" very, very seriously, as those who write the jacket blurbs for my books are frozen as a snapshot in time, their feelings and thoughts at that moment sometimes being the introduction to them, via my works, to my readers).   I am only partially able to spend the time in the recording studio that I would like, as my voice is still in and out.  Dammit.

Some of the new poems are getting strong, positive reaction.  This tells me I am cracking through an emotional barrier.  Nice to be alive.  Usually.

Dan McTaggart has approached me about writing a brief essay explaining the philosophical construct of "Plato’s Cave" for his new book.  It’s a book of poems about diners.  No kidding.  But one day we were having lunch at a diner and somehow the concept came up and I explained to him my understanding of it and that moment got captured in one of his poems, so he wanted me to recapture it.  Like I can remember what I said.  Although I do recall the waitress had very nice legs.  I think that influenced my tip.

That’s all for now.  More later.

Those who have heard of the situation with my Grandmother have been asking after her health.  I am happy to report that she weathered the surgery for her fractured hip well (always a concern at age 97) and is resting comfortably.

If all goes well I plan to go visit her very soon, as I miss her and there was a time, not sure if it is still so, that I was her favourite.  That was a long time ago.  But, for the iron-willed woman who pluck the darning-needle from the palm of my hand, staunched the blood of my first nosebleed and the time I took two rusty nails into my skull, I owe her so much.

See you next weekend, Grandma.  Be strong.  And quit arguing with the doctors.

My Grandmother is fading.

Not so much dying as fading. In her late 90’s, Glada Hickman, my mother’s mother, is starting to have reality taken from her. She gets confused. Forgets events, dates, people. She remembers things that never were (I have a couple exes like that, maybe they have Alzheimers?).

This is the woman who, for my entire life, as stood as a symbol of durability. It is like watching Gibraltar crack and slowly crumble into the sea. It is sad and terrifying.

Her life was extremely rough, and she met it head on. Working for years as a housekeeper for a very rich family, while living under conditions you or I would have found intolerable, while she raised, alone, two kids, my Mother and my Uncle Robert, who died several years ago. His death broke her spirit, to some degree. She has said since then, repeatedly, to me, that no one should ever have to bury their child. You can see in her eyes how much that hollowed her out.

She’s the kind of person who in her seventies, if no one came in time to do her lawn, would get out her lawnmower and mow her acre+ hillside. She’d gather the mulberries from the mulberry trees in her yard and can dozens of jars of jam. She’d walk down a long dirt and gravel road to catch the bus to town (and to get her mail…her mailbox was along Hartman Run Road, a sizable trek from her house for anyone).

Now she sits in her room in an assisted living center, watching the birds at her bird feeder out the window, growing angry with her loss of control in her life (she will not move in with anyone, and she cannot live alone in this condition).

Time, for me, is like a vast and endless ocean, so I can think of her along the time line wherever I choose and see her as she was, defiant, opinionated and a mother bear of a magnitude that would make my first ex-wife seem like a creampuff (no wonder those two never got along) next to her.

I see her when I can, but when she is coherent she is angry and bitter about what is happening to her and the controls being placed on her life by those trying to protect her from harming herself and others. It is difficult for me to imagine ever being in that situation, but seeing her going through it, it makes me ponder my own end of life more.

I could tell you tales you would not believe of what she has endured in her life. But in the end, it is her life, not mine. These are her stories, not mine. And the end may be far away or as near as the next phone call.

According to various sources, including myself, my web hosting company (web.com), my publisher, my friend Dan McTaggart, the remaining judges for the TVC2008 who have not yet gotten their votes in to me (harrumph), Barnes & Noble, my parents, my sibs, the media, my sons, one of my ex wives and two or three inspirationally-gifted friends, the next three days of my life should unfold with some of the following milestones.

Tomorrow we will announce the winner of the TVC2008. Mass hysteria will abound as we announce the TVC2009.

peacat.com will vanish, by midnight tonight. If no one with greater claim to the name asks for it before the registration runs out next year, it will go back on the open market.

I will give three two-hour readings at Barnes & Noble in Morgantown, WV, Sunday (10-12, 1-3, 4-6) with the assistance of the amazing Dan McTaggart, who co-authored Psalms of the Monster River Cult with me. I don’t think they could handle the intensity of the Long Beach reads, so I am trying to strike a balance.

Michael Phelps will win two more Olympic Gold Medals.

I will add ten more pieces to williamfdevault.com. Someone will blast me for the lovely nudity that is interspersed with the other artwork on the site. I will feel bad that I am being criticized, but will soldier on.

I will hear from someone out of an unexpected quarter.

I will write something inexplicably charming.

I will announce sometime today…oops, already did, that some of the Fields of Arbol pieces appearing on Amomancer will find their way onto williamfdevault.com.

Some doucebag will leave a stupid (definition: willfully ignorant), presumptive and irrelevant comment on one of my blogs.

I will drive over 500 miles in the next three days. I will still be alive Monday morning.

I will have dinner with my family on Saturday, and visit with my Grandmother, who is 96…bearing down on 97 next month.

I will discover a fantastic new muse.

I stayed up way too late last night, working on the final tracks to Evangelist. Every time I thought I had one finished, I’d suddenly get another idea, changing the instrumentation, the attitude, something about the piece in my mind. It’s a little insane right now. I feel like I’ve lit the fuse on the rocket but am having problems getting comfortable in the pilot’s seat. This will probably end up being one of those projects where I hate everything about it before I am done with it.

We were working with the guitar for one particularly upbeat piece (which I shall not name at this time) when I realized we needed a good bass line. So we turned what we working with on the guitar into a bass line. Better. But now, the drums sounded wrong. Too fast, too shaky. Maybe slow them down a bit and…hold it. Now we have a problem with the tone of the vocals. Sheesh. This reminds me of why I gave up painting. I would tweak things until they were a mess. Maybe I just need to timebox the process and deal with it.

A name for the publishing house is driving me nuts. The original name, peacat, is off the table as far as I am concerned. I could use it, but that would be disrespectful and a little odd. As such… will have to go down through history as the one publication of that imprint. An amazing book, if now a bit….ironic.

McTaggart wants Monster River Press. No. Too regional (we dubbed the Monongahela River the Monster River for our collaboration Psalms of the Monster River Cult.

City of Legends Press is in play, but too self-referential. Likewise any variation on my name or various sobriquets. I will give myself until mid-July to work it out, I have authors waiting on me and I am so fucking tired of waiting on other people. Patience was the last virtue I learned and the first one I lose, it is not in my nature to wait, I pace a hole in the rug.

I am going to see my Grandmother this weekend, and I have an invite to a party. I know why I was invited, and although there is a part of me that always knows I am cunning enough to dodge flagrant temptation, for at least three good reasons I don’t even want to see me have to. So we shall see if my curiosity and arrogance beat out my virtue and common sense.

Place your bets.