MACHINES AND (their) MACHINATIONS

 

March 28^th : many things happened on this day in history, but one less dramatic event caught my mind’s eye.

March 28, 1797 – Nathaniel Briggs patented a washing machine.

 

So what, you say. So many machines before and a whole lot more after, it’s a big yawn,

 

Evermore, we are not the drivers of machines but their slaves. If you ride public transportation or fly on planes, (machines) you will note that almost everyone is glued to their phones, (machines) and while we transport, it’s the machines that own us all the way.

We are located there, but we are not there. We are in our machines, increasingly serving their agendas, born largely of the greed or interests of other users.

 

Granted, this is an enslavement at will. The forced uses notwithstanding, (services and connections that don’t exist outside the world of the machines) we signed onto these dependencies ourselves.

I like my computer and especially email and WORD for my daily work. I like listening to recorded music, even if live music is often better. I’m as slavish to the mechanical world as anyone.

 

But something about it continues to cause me a low-level itch. What, I wonder, would it be like to cut all but the natural world out of my days if only for a few days?

 

I think about it, but short of taking rare Internet breaks I don’t do it.

Got to go and “do” the laundry now. I mean, my washing machine will do the doing, and I will sit here watching a concert given long ago and recorded on a machine.

©By Ken Benner

MINI-MILES

 

In life, there are major celebratory milestones. The day you got engaged, married, realized you were expecting a child, the day your child was born, and more.

Anyone can recognize these, and everyone you share it with gets it. These are monumental moments.

Then, there are the mini monuments. These are just as meaningful, but in a private way. The day you first realized you were in love with a pimply classmate, the day you first got your period, or the day your child told you they loved you more than ice-cream. Even if shared, these moments would not feel monumental to most others.

 

It is the same for the writing journey.

 

The big milestones everyone recognizes—

*The day you get a reputable literary agent (Been there 😊)

*The day your manuscript goes to acquisitions (Been there 😅)

* The day you have a traditional paying offer to publication (Been there 😲)

*The day your book comes out (Been there 😀)

*The day you get your first unsolicited good review (Been there 😄)

*The day you get the first advance check (Been there 😉)

*The day one of your books hits the best sellers list (Never been there and can’t manage to imagine 😜)

 

And then, there are the mini-milestones, ones that only another writer can understand. They are also grand, but only a few could possibly “get it”—

*The day you finish a first draft to a novel 🙌

*The day you manage to fix a serious plot hole that seemed fatal only a day earlier 👍

*The day you overcame a state of ennui as you drafted, because you realized what the story is really about 👈

*Any of the days you managed to pen a nifty (though dreaded) synopsis of your work 😇

 

Been there, to all the mini milestones above, many times. It never gets old.

 

 

All of the above are felt deeply, but the celebration goes on with you and only your writing friends, if you choose to share.

CREATIVE WRITING THROUGH HARD LIFE-PATCHES

 

A few months back, I read a post about writing through the impossible. You can read it here.

I thought about the very first project I had scheduled to pen, a chapter book that I thought could be my magnum opus. (It wasn’t. It would be three more years before I began to know what I was doing.)

 

My youngest was about to start kindergarten, and for the first time in years I would have mornings to myself. I had dreamt of writing in a disciplined way for many years, but it never seemed possible.

 

It felt like it was a now-or-never sort of deal.

 

I got all the equipment I thought I needed. A year or two later, much of it became irrelevant as I learned how and what works for me, and the computer replaced most of these supplies/tools. But in late August of 2001 I thought I needed special paper, colored pencils, and a fine notebook with removable pages that would make the re-arranging (think cut-and-paste) and, what else—a quiet workspace in the corner of our bedroom.

Most important was the dedication to spending two solid hours every weekday morning at my desk. No ifs, ends, or buts. Only a personal medical emergency would override this solemn vow from me to me.

 

One week into it came a fateful Tuesday morning when our world came to a standstill. Yup, September 11, 2001. My husband was glued to CNN, and I, seeing the old pattern of excuses for why I couldn’t do what I had vowed to, made the intelligent decision to not give in this time. My two daily hours with the work I had assigned myself to complete were first, no matter that the world seemed on fire.

I recited the saying, if the world is going to end tomorrow, plant a tree.

 

It was one of the best decisions I ever made. To this day, I keep this vow. I will not allow anything to interfere with self-assigned writing work, be it feeling a bit sick, difficult chapters in personal relations, world crises, or just loss of motivating thread for a story.

I plow through. It’s a “just do it,” allowing myself to exceed the minimum but never do less.

 

Because what I have realized is that it isn’t the product or the quality of the writing experience. For me it’s the very work discipline that has been my salvation through the thick and the thin of life’s ever undulating thread weaving the fabric of time.

PURIM, LONG AGO---

 

Purim is celebrated today all over the Jewish world. This holiday of dressing in costumes, reading the scroll of Esther, and drinking to oblivion (by religious commandment to drink to a state where one can’t tell the difference between a Haman, the arch villain, and a Mordechai, the righteous hero) is a hoot.

 

I only celebrated it as a child, and drinking was not part of our allotment, thank you very much. But costumes certainly were.

 

I had the great fortune to have a best friend whose mother was a genius seamstress. Thus, in grades 2-4 I got to pair with my friend as her mother made us into Mini and Mickey (the Disney mice) and into a she and he sailors. In fifth grade I wore a costume my mother had bought for me while we were briefly in the Netherlands. I was a Dutch girl, and I only remember how uncomfortable the wooden shoes were. I didn’t dance that Purim.

 

In sixth grade, I was on my own. My mother said I was old enough to make my own costume, and for some reason, I agreed. I had to think fast, because the party and the yearly competition for best costume were only a day away, and my original idea for dressing as my favorite magazine failed miserably in my attempted execution.

 

I had never won first prize, and I wasn’t thinking of any prize. I just didn’t want to be that kid, the one who showed up wearing plastic glasses and calling it “a costume.”

 

We had a song we sang back then. To the American melody of She’ll be Coming ’round the Mountain we sang the Hebrew words, “Madman in Pajamas.” Trust me, it works. That ditty never made any sense. But less than a day before the Great Purim Costume Party & Competition, it suddenly made sense to me.

 

And so, I was. I was a Madman (mad person?) in Pajamas. I danced and sang the song and waved an old flashlight my mother had inherited, and wada-ye-know, I won first prize.

Which goes to show that life can be senseless. It also shows that spontaneity and desperation are underrated, and should be given more respect.