Journal & Rants: Mishmash

My Writer's Blog Stones of Erasmus Has Become a Mishmash

This blog has become a mishmash. It originally began as a place to place all of my musings, whether they originate from a journal, from Myspace (when I had that service) or Facebook.

Here is how I think I look when I am writing blog posts.

It has also, on occasion, served as a travel blog. And when I wrote a lot of poetry, it was a place to put my poems (but not too much of that here).

Hmmmm.
Now, I have been mainly sending my "text novel" to here and to Facebook.

Did I tell you, though, that I have signed up for a 3-hour Graduate level course in Reference and Information services?

Get this:
Who wants to be equipped to answer any ready reference question?

I think I am going to buy a kindle and make it into my very own ready reference shelf:

• Merriam Webster Dictionary
• Thesaurus
• Encyclopedia Britannica
• World Almanac
• CIA World Fact Book
• World Atlas

HMMMM what else

oh yeah:

• Famous First Facts

Hah Hah

that would be awesome

OK ... got to log in to chat for LIS 501 (the Library Science class I am taking at the University of Southern Mississippi.

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Text Book: How to Text to Your Blog

I am Texting This Post to My Blog, Y'all!

"London Calling"

I just started this texting your blog thing. I thought it would be fun to text my thoughts on Blogger and Facebook. I read that in Japan "text books" are a big deal. A woman started texting from her cell phone these so-called text novels. Whenever she was waiting or taking the subway she would text the next plot point. Started out free but now the trend has caught on and people are texting like crazy. 

Where Am I When I Texted this Post: I am at Heavenly Ham with my mom!

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First Summer Post: 2009

Summer is here.

Summer is here. Put on the suntan lotion!

I had so many ambitions for this summer:
1. Audition for a play
2. Get a job
3. Take a library science course
4. Write a novel or collection of short stories
5. Find an LTR (!)

Now, so far, I have only begun to accomplish number 3.
     The other bullet points are just that — lofty points!
     Now, I did attempt to do number One. I was going to audition for Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf but the theater was too far away and I did not want to spend my hot, summer days commuting.

About getting a job: 

     I did house sit for a week with mercurial Zack. I made some bucks and got to hang out with him. He is into his peers more than he is into me -- add football, and getting his body ripped and I end up a mere fixture in the house, a little bit lower than the dogs. I caught him a couple of times being bored. Maybe it is true that boredom is part of being an adolescent. I would think the trick in "growing up" is figuring out what to do with unstructured time. It is funny, I was bored watching him be bored. But, to make a potentially tragic story happy, the both of us went to Café Du Monde one morning after his workout and conditioning. And he did help diagnose my car problems (I had a defective tire valve) and directed me to an inexpensive tire repair service. Thank you Zack! All in all it was satisfactory. I do love him and hope he reads this blog!
    Maybe I will try my other plan and get a job as a barista. Anyone need a barista?

About the fiction writing: 

     I need to stop time for a considerable length and go through all my stuff:

Here is my incomplete TOC of stories with a one-sentence tag line:

Staten Island Ferry: A Collection of Short Stories by Greig Roselli

1. Green Apples: A clerk who secretly lives in the basement of a busy urban public library
2. Bully: Two kids become friends after a fight on a trampoline
3. The Hammer: Morgan feels guilty about accidentally killing his father
4. Pre-Stress: Adam comes-of-age once he finds an abandoned lot filled with pre-stress concrete
5. Staten Island Ferry: A man writes poetry on a ferry and befriends a stranger
6. Kierkegaard's Son: A professor finds a half-dead woman and brings her home
7. Highway 90: A middle-aged mom defends her convenience store from being bulldozed
8. Socialite: A girl posts fake pictures of herself on the internet with unexpected consequences
9. Song of Roland: Two men meet after fifty years of separation

     I am thinking I may need a total of twelve stories but these are stories I have already developed. This may end up being a more ambitious project than I originally imagined.
     More later!

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A Public Service Announcement from Stones of Erasmus: A Library in Your Hometown

A public service announcement from Stones of Erasmus 

encourages you to support your local public library.

I was traveling by car with my buddy Airplane to Grand Isle, Louisiana one summer weekend. We saw this abandoned bookmobile on the side of the road. It looked apocalyptic and out-of-place. We made this video to bemoan a future where libraries don't exist and are abandoned, lost, or forgotten. Don't let reading die! Read a book. Share a book. Tell a story. Cite a page. Turn a page. Go forward. Do it in a novel. A play. A poem. Read!

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10 Notes on Being a High School Director

Being a High School Director:

Photo by Kal Visuals on Unsplash

1. Never underestimate your actors' potential.

2. Always try to find SOMETHING an actor is doing well even if everything they are doing seems destined for failure.

3. During rehearsals, the actors perform for you so make them KNOW you are paying attention to them. During the show, they still perform for you even though the audience believes they are performing for them and the actors believe they are doing it for themselves.

4. Allow actors to feel out their roles. BUT some people need more coaching. Be flexible and intuit what an individual needs. Be specific in giving hooks. (I am working on getting better at this).

5. I have not figured out rehearsal pacing yet. When do I tell them to be off book? When do I yell at them for not knowing their lines? What is the fine balance between sternness and generosity?

6. When there is little less than one week before showtime, work with what you got. Don't add anything more.

7. SHOW the LOVE

8. The actors internalize your comments so choose your words carefully.

9. When directing use VERBS. For example: "Look Angry" is a bad stage direction: instead: "Prowl around the stage like you are a tiger in a cage" is more specific and doable.

10. It will all come together (albeit, a few SNAFUs)

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Aphorism With Image: "Hemmed"

I write when I am hemmed into a corner. Profile on me: sitting at my school desk surrounded by papers.

image: M.C. Escher, Drawing Hands, 1948, lithograph, 11 1/8 x 13 1/8 inches

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Essay: On Feeling Unrequited Love

So does this story ring true for you? So, he has not called in a week nor does he answer calls. Voicemail messages are never recorded (the phone rings and rings).

     Nor does he respond to text messages, e-mails, Myspace messages, or mental vibes sent through psychic airwaves. The last time we spoke was at a party, but even then the conversation was limited. He was drinking a beer and gave lots of non-verbal clues that he was not going to engage in conversation other than, "Hey, wassup?" When trying to establish a day or time to "hang out" his response is non-committal: a simple shrug of the shoulder. He says, looking everywhere except in your eyes, "We'll get together, yeah". When questioned why he had not answered any calls or responded to texts, he explains he always gets them too late to respond. Feeling the need to be annoyed, the words "Yeah, I don't think you're an asshole, though" spill out. At that moment there is a tension there that was not there in the past. When the truth emerges that he is not that important in your world, you think, "Move on" but it is hard to completely remove someone from your life. So you make adjustments. The relationship is akin to a liberated son promising his mom he will visit on weekends. Not likely to happen. Abandoning ship does seem to be the best option, but at the same time, you do not sense the relationship is going to suddenly take on wings and fly to new unexplored heights.
   It is a tough call to determine when a relationship has reached the end of its lifespan. When is it necessary to bail out or adjust the terms of engagement? Needs change and expectations dwindle. There may still be love but the need "to be together" has faded. Friendships have boundary lines. There are unsaid lines drawn in the sand. The desire to move a relationship forward could be negated by the other party's unwillingness to go with it. Perhaps they lose interest. Or they got a bad vibe. People are super sensitive. We process subtle messages and act accordingly. The pain of separation is equal to the amount of initial energy and time invested.
   If it is a friend you only met recently and oddly the relationship ends because she moves away, the pain of separation will probably not be as great as a friendship cultivated throughout many years that suddenly terminates.
   The lyric from the Sondheim song "every day a little death" makes sense when one considers the many times love is given only for it to eventually subside and cease to be. Every day there is a little death, not only in our bodies but in the course of our relationships.

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