The Language Mix/ a cute little story

John Lina
Fr 313
Devoirs pour mercredi, le 9e mars
One day, the good professor and bon vivant, Monsieur Beavei, decided to take his wife to get something to eat. Although he had carte blanche to go to any restaurant in New York City, he decided to go to Sardis. The professor is very important so he sent a courier in advance to arrange a table for two at two.
The restaurant is well known and filled with art deco pieces. On this particular day the menu was in calligraphy and difficult to read; the words seemed to be camouflaged on the page. Because of this they decided to order an aperitif and then a la carte from the menu to avoid any mistakes. Madame Beavei was particularly fond of the potatoes au gratin at Sardis.
The maitre d’ came to the table and was very upset with Madame Beavei. He said, “But Madame! Clothing is required.” You see, when she removed her coat the Madame was au naturel. The maitre d’ bundled her back into her coat, took the Professor and his wife, each by the arm, put them out the back door into an alley full of debris and pushed them on their way.
Madame Beavei said to her husband, “Do you remember the last time we went there? I wore denim and the results were the same.”

The Linas in Troy Missouri

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The French Chiropractor

It was Paris in the spring time and the American tax season. I had to make a trip into Paris from Chantilly to visit an office of Arthur Andersen for tax purposes, no big deal. On a separate and unrelated problem, I’d been having discomfort with my back and hip for a few weeks, it was annoying but not painful; so I wanted to take care of that as well.

Michel Lefrancois knew of a chiropractor (sort of) in Paris and it wasn’t far from La Defense so I decided to make one trip for the two issues. Carola came with me, her signature may also have been required, and we drove into Paris and to La Defense, parked in the public garage and made our way to the AA office. There we signed whatever documents were necessary and went on our way.

Michel had given me directions to the doctor’s office and we had our map of Paris, which was very good, and found our way to it. There may have been a few wrong turns on the way but none serious enough to say we’d lost our way.

I recall the slightest feeling of bladder pressure as we were leaving the office building in La Defense but decided not to pay attention to it. Now as we were driving through the streets of Paris, an exciting experience any time, the pressure was becoming more serious. I was not only looking for the doctor’s street but for a vespasienne as well.

We found the street but not a vespasienne. There were no parking spots on the narrow streets of the neighborhood; I drove around the block to be sure. The pressure was becoming intense. Voila, a parking spot but two streets away. I quickly parked, told Carola to lock the car and bring the keys. I’d pointed out the door to the doctor’s building and told her, fourth floor. I ran down the street to the building.

Inside the R-d-c, I encountered the concierge and verified the doctor’s office location. I began waiting for the elevator but the pressure was becoming unbearable for me. I took to the stairs, two at a time, up four flights to his level. There were four doors; I had to look at each until I found his name. I was dancing by this time, almost ready to burst. I rapped on the door.

He answered it, in his white lab coat, smiling, extending his hand, slowly and politely to graciously greet me. I was panting and yelled at him, “La toilette! Il est une emergencie! Ou est la toilette! Ou est la toilette!” He tried to shake my hand but I yelled even louder. “It’s an emergency!” and grasping my groin I loudly and emphatically asked, “Where’s the goddam toilet!”

He understood, and hurried me into his office and to the toilet door. I made it but it took a heroic effort to hold it in until I had myself clear of my trouser fly. I relieved myself, and what a relief it was, and returned calmly back to his office.

There I smiled and equally politely extended my hand in greeting, a gesture he politely ignored, told him my name and we got down to business. He tried to act as if nothing had happened except he seemed a little wary of my size and if he was causing me any pain.

So You Want to Write Book

There is an idea floating around in my head; I may have referred to it previously, it is a structure or a formula for writing and one that I think has been used by authors in the past but I am putting my imprint on it for my own purposes. A method of adding engaging detail to a story to keep the reader entertained.

Imagine a spread sheet with the story line going across the top row; each cell is a discrete part of the story, a segment where several related segments are/ become a chapter. In the second row is the first layer and so on through all of the sensual layers of the scene; time, time of day, place, lighting, temperature, color, location description, sights, sounds, smells, feelings, others in the scene- each on a line with descriptors of them, the details of which depend on the importance of the character. There is also a grammatical line where the tense of the segment is set so as to prevent morphing tense as the story unfolds.

The writing of a story is more than sitting down and letting imagination flow. The technicalities of it are such that one has to engage a reader from start to finish. I just finished a Michael Robotham book wherein he did just that. Some of it I could see coming as the story unfolded but there was a structure to it that allowed it to make sense from start to finish. Some of the story was quite titillating, shocking, even erotic, but as a whole it engaged me to the point that I had to finish the last few discs all at once instead of hearing it out as I drove in the car.

The structure above was evident in this latest story and was suggested by a writer’s workshop program that I had. It runs afoul of what Steven King, says in his treatise on writing; he proposes the stream of consciousness approach. The structured approach seems more business-like and lends itself to development of an integrated story that can be consistently told; I’ve read/heard too many that are not.

I am reminded of advice I gave to a fellow working for me about how to write a rather long paper about cost accounting for the machine shops at NNS. I told him to spend a lot of time on an outline of it and then write the paper. He eschewed my advice and wrote it in the “Steven King” style. He wound up re-writing it several times until he finally went back, made an outline, and then wrote the paper. It works in that context and it probably works in the context of fiction. Well, in effect that cost accounting method was a fictional story and not the reporting of facts.

A longer story, book length, would be about 200 to 250 pages; if my arithmetic is correct that there are 3 pages per 1000 words, it would seem that a book would be about 83,000 words, which is equal to 83 blog entries and I made 88 in two years. A book is a formidable undertaking.

The Time-Life books of the presidents that I am reading average about 150 pages. They are condensations of many references and not supposed to be at all fictional although they contain some opinions of the author. With a ton of material from which to choose the authors have to decide what to include and still tell the story as objectively as they think possible. These 150 pages represent about 50,000 words and deal with the birth, upbringing, professional, political, presidential, and post-presidential (where there was one) lives of the presidents; a lot of ground to cover in such a few words. Mercifully complete for the casual reader and a bibliography that will satisfy the scholar who wants to get deeper into the subject.

I think I got away with stream of consciousness for the few stories I wrote because they were short and could be revised/ parsed without much difficulty. But even The Ball Hawk seems to be a little more than one would want to read in the form in which it is presented. It is 4,000 words and 11 pages. It seems to be too long for my taste and no one else has commented on it. It seems that there would have to be a number of hooks included to bring the reader back to a level of enthusiasm necessary to finish the story. This is what Michael Robotham does so well.

The Ball Hawk would have to be rewritten with the structure above in mind and the length, without adding to the plot or story line, may increase by more than twice to get all of the layering and subplots necessary to make the story interesting for the reader. It is an oral story written without the reader in mind and, therefore, does not engage a reader all the way through in an entertaining way. The House With Six Chimneys is likewise an oral story that was written down from its original form; I find it engaging because I am listening to it as it is told, not necessarily reading it but that is just me.

The conclusion I am reaching is that a story that can be told orally is not a good candidate for a book unless it is written with a reader in mind as opposed to a listener. A listener can be engaged by the story teller’s performance as well as his words but the reader has to be engaged only by the words. Audio books are an anomaly in that the listener is not seeing a performance as he hears the words so he patiently listens to the whole story. A good plot, enhanced by engaging detail is what is necessary for the success of a written story.

Advice You May Not Even Need

Good advice for you
Don’t let marketing fool you
There are hidden costs

It is not the boobies
Not even the pretty shape
But the personality

It’s not the package
Not even the hard body
But the personality

Importance

Feeling important

A good thing for one to do

Not more important

The Ocean in a Teacup

There is a little humming bird, not six feet from me, drinking water from the bubbling fountain in the meditation grotto here in the back yard. He is remaining there, alit on the edge, wings quiet for a second or two and then he’s away in a soft whir. He’s back again and again, three times. It’s quiet and peaceful here; the water is gurgling and provides white noise.

This morning on our walk, we saw a large deer, a doe. She wasn’t afraid of us and waited until we were close to run away. We saw lizards along the path, and bizarre insects.

There are so many forms of life that one has difficulty remembering that life is manifested in all that is alive, animal, vegetable, and microbe. Life is on this planet and is now as much a part of it as the core, crust, water, and air. Energy supplied by the sun allows life to transform atoms, molecules, and minerals into structures that enable it to fulfill a purpose, or two, or three. Without life, the earth would be those other things reacting to forces but otherwise inert and basking in sunshine, unappreciated.

The fundamental purpose of life seems to be procreation. A second, and coupled with the first, may be to evolve into ever more ideal forms. Each generation of life is incrementally different from the previous; choices influence successors and some choices improve the species. Choice connotes decision making, and decision-making connotes intelligence. It is evolution, guided by incremental, intelligent choices.

An analogy is animal breeding, horses for example. Selective breeding has resulted in the establishment of recognizable breeds that have certain specific characteristics. There are many thousands of mixed breed animals out there but the breeders know the traits they desire and breed to get them and repeat them. The horses being bred have no idea; they are just doing what comes naturally. The fact that they are horses is the accumulated result of previous choices.

I remind myself that time is the passing of the present measured with an elastic ruler. This is a way of saying that the billions of years that the earth has existed are interesting but irrelevant. Only the present allows choices to be made. The past may have been influential; the future is yet to be realized, only the present is available.

Then too, we have to remember that life is always one generation away from extinction. This is a sad fact but we need not despair. The chain of life for individuals may be broken here and there but there is such an abundance and diversity of life that it will continue to exist in some form or another forever because this earth is never going to fall apart. If others think it shall— so what, as long as there’s tomorrow. Life goes on as if indestructible but paradoxically only one generation from extinction.

It seems that another important purpose of life is arranging what it needs to exist. The effects of sun and moon, and to a lesser extent other components of the universe, are such that there are forces acting on the earth that yield dramatic and never repeated results.

There are plate movements, climate changes, tides, storms, droughts, and a whole long list of other changes taking place in the long and short term. Yet within all of this chaos, life structures itself and that around it to enable its existence. This takes energy to accomplish, and there’s plenty of it supplied by the sun, but it also takes intelligence, the basis of which is contained in DNA molecules.

I go back to my original thesis, that life is part and parcel of this planet and we are, humbly, only one aspect of it. Life transforms the energy of the sun and the materials of the earth into that which supports its existence and fulfills its purposes. It will exist so long as it chooses.

The humming bird has returned. I hear the soft purr of his wings but I’m not showing attention except to slyly peek at him. He stays; so small that he’s taking a bath in the flowing water of the fountainhead. Life is good.

Added on 7-11-2015